How To Survive In Middle Earth When You're A Teenaged Girl
by Peppery Mints
Summary: When you get dumped into Middle Earth, you start missing things. Little things. You know, like toilets. And hairbrushes. And tampons. And Twinkies.
1. Chapter 1: Down The Rabbit Hole, Toto

**- Chapter One -**

_(In which our intrepid heroine gets flung face-first into Middle Earth and nearly drowns.)_

* * *

It wasn't my fault.

No, _really_, it wasn't. If anyone wants to start slinging some blame around, it really should land on Brian, my little brother's bratty friend. To be fair to my little brother, Brian wasn'treally a friend; more like a casual acquaintance, or – in more specific terms – a kid who followed my brother around incessantly. Luke, my little brother, didn't find him half as annoying as I did, but he still found him pretty irritating. Then again, Luke didn't have to put up with Brian breaking into my room to steal my diary and torture me by reading it aloud in a sing-song voice. I had to put up with that.

It was a rather sticky midsummer day, the kind of day that makes you feel like your skin will boil away completely, and unfortunately this is pretty common down in Texas. I was draped over the front railing of our house, my hair piled on top of my head in order to get it off my sweaty neck, and admittedly I didn't look my best. I was wearing a tank top tied firmly above my ribcage, and the only reason I didn't dispense with clothes entirely and run around buck naked was because I didn't want to give my brothers an early education. If you tilted your head just right, you could imagine that there was a breeze stirring in the pine trees to my left, but I was feeling too hot to move and go over to the shade.

My alarm bells started going off in my sweaty head when everything went very quiet.

Now, this is a _cattle_ ranch. Cows, hay, chickens, beef patties, the works. When things go quiet, that's a pretty bad sign, since there's almost always some chicken running away from a fight, or a cow with her head stuck somewhere, or my little brothers screaming about a rattle snake. Eventually, I marshaled my muscles into action and slouched off the porch, searching for one or all of my little brothers. There were four of them – Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John. If that sounds familiar, congratulations, you're a Baptist too.

"Boys!" I called out when I was about five steps away from the porch. Our dog, Bowser, poked his head sleepily out from beneath the porch. See, even our mutt was hot. He was risking the family of skunks who lived under there in order to get out of the sun. "Boys, ya'll ready for lunch?"

"Prissy!" a familiar voice whined, and I turned around. "Hey, Prissy, wanna come check this out?"

It was Brian, the little snot bubble. I felt my nails dig into my palms. "What do you want, Brian?"

"Ooh, Prissy's _naked_," Brian cooed, tossing his stupid brown hair out of his face. I took a threatening step towards him and he shot off like a startled rabbit.

"Come back here, you little brat," I seethed, and hurried after him. Okay, maybe I didn't _hurry_ hurry. It was a hundred freaking degrees out there, what did you want me to do? Sprint?

He ran off, surprisingly agile in the tall grass, and skirted the fence which kept our cows in the pastures and not on our front porch. Brian was following the little trail my father had blazed one summer – it led down to the creek, and it was a pretty good distance away from our house. Once I got going, I started sweating even more than I already was, and I stopped, boneless and tired, once I reached the path. I trotted downhill after Brian, and only started running again once I reached the shady pine trees which followed our creek. "Brian?" I called out. "Brian, where are you?"

There was no answer. And it was still pretty quiet out, even for summer. The cicadas had stopped their unearthly buzz, and somehow that made it seem cooler.

"C'mere, check this out!"

It was Brian. He was hanging over an old well that my father had boarded up, since it had been dry since about the Stone Age. Brian, in his infinite weasel wisdom, had ripped the rotting boards off and was half submerged in the huge open hole.

"Get away from there!" I shouted, and snatched a handful of his shirt, hauling him backwards. "You wanna fall down that hole and die?"

He jerked away from me and put his tongue out. "I wouldn't _die_."

My hand flashed out and whacked him on the side of the head. "Don't sass me," I snapped. "You go along home, you understand? And if I ever see you near this well again, I'll tell your mama. Mrs. Lorenz'll whip you, and you _know_ it."

Brian looked up at me with mutiny in his eyes. "I hate you!" He spat. "All you do is nag, nag, nag. Go _ahead_ and tell my mom, I don't care!"

I made as if to grab him and he ducked away, splashing into the creek. "Go home," I warned. "Or I'll pitch you into the stud pen and let Rambo gore you." Rambo was our stud bull, an old gray bull who loved nose rubs, cows, and absolutely hated it when anyone went into his pen. He'd go crazy if you tried to clean his pen without putting him out to graze first, and had broken two of my father's ribs last year when my father tried to do just that.

"Shut up, retard," He huffed under his breath, and turned to go.

I should have paid more attention to that murderous look in his eyes. As I turned around to start picking up the rotten boards and piling them back on top of the well, he rushed me.

Brian was a mean little kid, but he wasn't a murderer. I don't think he _meant _to shove me down the well. But he did, since I was too tired and too hot to register what was happening before I was falling face first into the well. I heard his panicked shout, calling, "Prissy! Priscilla, are you okay?" And there was a roaring in my ears, like the wind rushing past, and that was just about when I started screaming.

* * *

I kept screaming, and kept falling. And falling and screaming. Pretty soon my breath ran out and I really began to panic, since any second now I could smash into the bottom of the well and liquidize every bone in my body. I held my arms out in front of me, as if that would somehow help when I landed, and squeezed my eyes tightly shut. A few incoherent prayers, curse words, and jumbled phrases ran through my mind all at once – every nerve ending in my body was on fire with adrenaline and fear. In a split second, I would hit the bottom and die. I hoped it wouldn't be painful.

But that split second passed, and so did a dozen more, until my fearfully paralyzed body began to loosen a little, and I cracked my eyes open. There was a speck of light, way down in the distance, and I wondered if I was impossibly falling _up_. The speck of light turned into a twinkle, then a glimmer, then a steady circle of bright light that was rapidly widening until I had punched straight through it, gravity yanking me relentlessly downwards.

When I started seeing clouds, my breath conveniently came back to me, and I started the whole screaming/praying/cursing thing all over again.

I started getting soaked, because the clouds around me weren't small fluffy things, they were dark and full of water. Not to mention it was absolutely _freezing_, and I saw my arms and legs starting to turn blue. I tried to move away from the inevitable ground, as stupid as it sounds, but all I succeeded in doing was scudding through the air and rolling upside down. Now that I could see where I had fallen, I saw a small black dot blink out of existence. I had fallen down the well and into the sky.

Now that I think about that, it sounds pretty stupid, doesn't it?

Because I was busy screaming, praying, and swearing like a truck driver – not to mention I was on my back – I didn't see the approaching river. But I sure felt it, and it felt like I had been dropped onto concrete. From that height, I should have spontaneously flattened against the surface of the river, thin as a pancake, and then slowly disintegrated. All it did was knock the breath out of me _hard_, and I must have plunged easily thirty feet into the water. Everything was numb, but I felt a dull throbbing pain filling every inch of my body like helium.

I was so dazed and panicked I didn't even notice there wasn't a current. But my body realized that I needed air, and I started clawing reflexively through the water in search of it. Big silvery bubbles flew from my mouth, and I frantically chased them towards the surface. Big black patches started appearing in my vision, and I knew that if I didn't get some air in my lungs right this second, I would die. Just as everything flickered out, I split the water and started slapping around like a maniac, sucking in huge breaths half full of water.

Naturally, my lungs contained at least a third of water, and I started coughing like my ancient aunt after a cigarette. Even though there wasn't a current, the waves were choppy due to the wind, and my limbs felt like they had been dipped in gold. Of course, the water was absolutely frigid, but because I was already so cold from falling, I barely noticed this small fact.

I panned around in the water, still coughing, blinking water out of my eyes and still sort of sobbing. I must have wheeled around three times before my brain registered that the shore was at least a hundred yards away, and that I appeared to be in a medium sized lake. Of course, a hundred yards away might as well have been three miles, since I was still crying and being a little bit of a baby at that moment. But hey, you get dropped down a well and land in a huge lake and I'll see how _you_ react.

My legs were treading water, obviously on autopilot because I couldn't seem to move them very well, but I was getting tired fast. Not to mention I was sluggish with cold, and I was positive my lips were blue. Gradually, I regained control of my legs and noticed there was a miniscule island to my left, not far away. It was one of those little patches of land that kept trying to grow grass but failed; as far as I was concerned, it was manna from heaven. I crawled on top of it and flopped gracelessly, catching my breath and shivering hard.

I squinted up at the sky, and noticed that the clouds I had fallen through were swollen with water. Down in Texas, we would've said that a downpour was coming. In the distance, I could see the flickers of lightning rapidly approaching.

_Just great. I'm dripping wet when there's a lightning storm coming. _

My inner snark hadn't faded at all, and I wrung my orange hair out with shaking hands. I slapped my thighs hard to get some life back into them, and then dried my eyes as best I could. I had to swim to shore. There was a storm coming. Sure, I had fallen into somewhere, and I was most likely dead at the bottom of a well in real life, but I sure as hell wasn't gonna be killed twice in one day.

Priorities, people.

* * *

**Constructive criticism is vastly appreciated. Any errors, typos, mistakes, or other lapses in logic should be pointed out so I can fix them. Review and be recognized! **

.

.

_No reviews have been received at this time._


	2. Chapter 2: Generic Medieval Fantasy Land

**Previously...**

* * *

_Priscilla Henders, our resident Texas cowgirl, has chased a neighbor's brat and been accidentally pushed into a well. This well is suddenly no longer a well, and she ends up falling into the uncomfortable mess known as Middle Earth. This is unknown to Priscilla, as she thinks she's just been dumped in a giant lake. During the middle of a lightning storm._

* * *

**. Chapter Two .**

_(In which our intrepid heroine meets a friend and needs to pee.)_

* * *

Looking back at all this, it's a marvel I didn't die. A few times it seemed pretty cruel to keep me breathing, since I was in such agony it would have been more merciful to just shoot me or strangle me or something. Like this time, swimming frantically for shore with my heart in my throat, trying to outswim a lightning storm and whatever other beasties lurked beneath the choppy white waves. I was so cold every inch of me was numb, and my heartbeat felt slow and frozen in my chest. My teeth chattered as I pulled one heavy, heavy arm over my head and stroked towards shore.

Don't get me wrong – I'm a big girl. You don't live on a ranch for seventeen years without getting some muscle and some height. But I was so tired, and yeah, I'll admit it, I was scared out of my mind as well. If my body hadn't revved me up with adrenaline before the lightning storm came, there was a good chance I would have just laid back and drowned. The shore seemed much further off than I originally thought, and even thought I struggled against the waves, I always seemed to be knocked back two paces.

Overhead, a rumble of thunder hammered against the clouds, and I nearly jumped out of my skin. I have a small phobia of storms, as you've probably guessed by now. I kept swimming, even when the rain started pattering down on the lake and the wind flattened the surface of the waves, sloshing them against me with added force. I must have swallowed a gallon of water before I jabbed out with my foot and hit a rock. This idea was so delightful I backtracked in order to hit the rock again, and realized that the rock I was hitting must have been a _huge_ rock, since I was still a good way's from shore and I could feel it under my feet.

I was so tired that the temptation to simply hold my ground on the rock seemed a very valid idea, but I knew that once I stopped working, I'd freeze to death. I was frozen to the bone already, and if this was what my body was like after being heated up with exercise, standing still was _not_ an option. The sticky, hot afternoon I had been dropped out of seemed an eternity ago.

Just when the storm reached a fever pitch, with howling wind and forks of lightning spearing the ground, I could touch bottom. I was too wet to be snot-nosed, but if I had even an ounce of strength left in me, I would have been bawling. The tree line wasn't far from the shore, and I stumbled towards it blearily. Beneath me, the slick pebbled beach crunched under my bare feet, and I slipped on the wet rocks. Heh. Wet rocks. My fuzzed brain thunked into a different, more primal gear, and I made it to the tree line without another thought.

I needed warmth. If I didn't get warm, I would die. The trees around me creaked and groaned, unable to stand still beneath the weight of the wind. What's worse than being in the middle of a lake during a lightning storm? Why, being in the middle of the woods during a lightning storm, of course. I didn't have the energy to mentally berate myself, but then the skies split open and the whole world lit up like a June afternoon. A tree came down two inches away from me, in a massive roaring creak that sounding wrenching and painful. Now I knew the age old question: When a tree falls in the woods, nobody's around to hear it because they've just been flattened.

But that flash of light did show up a cave, not far away. It was a tiny cave, probably belonging to a fox or a badger, but I stumbled towards it anyway. The smoking carcass of the burned tree crackled menacingly, and I gave it a wide berth. Crouching down, I wedged myself in the cave and wrapped my arms around my knees, jamming my fingertips in my armpits. My orange hair swung into my face, and I remembered stupidly that I was wearing cutoff shorts and a tank top. Not exactly a parka and scarf. Come to think of it, I don't think I even owned a parka.

The thunder continued a continuous rumble that made my hair stand on end. I'll admit, the idea that I was curled beneath a tiny shelf of rock getting rained on after falling down a well was making me cry. Just a little bit. Not because I'm a softie or anything, but because I was scared. Sort of.

Okay, really freaking scared.

The storm didn't just peter off, either – it built up to a big brassy crescendo, and I heard other trees being felled in the forest. By that time, I was falling into a bit of a stupor thanks to how cold I was. Fear and the ever-present feeling that something was going to bite my butt from the depths of this little cave kept me awake, and it probably saved my life. I rocked a little back and forth on the heels of my feet, and realized that I couldn't feel anything from the waist down. This was a terrifying sign – I knew enough about survival that if I didn't start moving soon, I would die.

Miraculously, the rain began to slacken off just as that thought occurred. The skies didn't get any lighter – by this time, it was late afternoon – but I did notice a distinct lack of thunder overhead. I pulled myself out of my daze and wiped my eyes with my hands. I was a little warmer, but I couldn't move. My knees and ankles were so stiff from kneeling there that moving was impossibly. Anxiously, I jerked myself out of the tight cave and fell sideways onto some wet sticks.

The rain seemed softer somehow, and it felt a little more familiar without the thunder so loud and hugely close. When lightning storms happened at home, I was usually inside watching a recorded episode of _America's Next Top Model. _I picked myself up creakily and stumbled through the trees, every muddy patch feeling like ice to my feet. The sun would be setting soon, and if this rain continued into the night I was really screwed.

So what was my biggest concern? I had fallen down a well and hit my head so hard I was in a very realistic coma, and had been dumped in the middle of a lake in a lightning storm. All that aside, I was in the wilderness with no compass, no jacket, no shoes, and no other means of survival. I had no shelter for the night, even with the rain slacking off, and I was scared out of my wits.

What did my body suddenly decide it needed to do?

Pee. I know now that God was splitting his sides laughing, because in the midst of all this chaos, I was about to burst.

Don't get me wrong, I've peed outside before. But if you tell me you don't feel a little bit weird dropping your drawers in the middle of a rainstorm while you're lost and frozen, and I'll call you a liar straight to your face. I tried to find some semblance of privacy behind a tree (although I have no idea how "behind" the tree I was, I was lost in a forest after all).

Just as I was finishing up – and feeling much better – I looked up.

There was a man standing there in the rain, looking at me.

My first instinct? Scream. I did so, and fell over with my wet pants glued around my hips. I struggled to pull them up and the guy looked away kind of sheepishly, like he was just as embarrassed as I was. Second instinct? Run away. This one was harder to enact, but I tried. However, I heard him yell out to me; I don't know what he yelled, since it was sort of warped by my fear and all the noise. I whipped around a tree, wildly awake and full of adrenaline once more, with a nauseated taste in my mouth. I swallowed, and peeked around the tree. He was right smack in front of me. I shrieked again, but this time he grabbed my elbow to prevent me from taking off.

Looking back at all this, he was just trying to help me. But at that moment, I kicked him hard in the shins and yelled "Rapist!" as loudly as I could, and tried to run off again. He grunted, and probably cursed in another language I didn't recognize, and then released me. I tripped and fell, twisting my ankle with a particularly nasty sounding _pop_, and my numb ankle was suddenly flooded with warmth. Not pain, not yet, but there was warmth there. I remember thinking dispassionately, _I should get my other foot injured, it feels better_.

I backed up, crawling backwards on my elbows, and got sticks tangled in my wet hair. The man was hooded and cloaked, and I saw the glint of wet chain mail. A sword scabbard hung on his hip, and a large shield was strapped firmly to his back. He looked about the size of a young oak tree from my perspective, and looked positively frightening. The man reached a hand out to me to help me up, and I flinched away from it at first.

"Who are you?" I asked, over the wind and the rain.

He paused, cocked his head to one side, and said something in a different language.

"Do you speak English?"

Silence.

_Shit._

* * *

It didn't take long to figure out that he didn't speak English, and neither did either of his two companions. He brought me back to his campsite, which was inside a mercifully dry cave, and tended to my ankle. One of them gave me his cloak, which smelled pleasantly like lamb's wool, tobacco smoke, and mud. All of those scents were familiar, and I took a bit of comfort from that. Plus, the cloak nearly swallowed me and it kept me quite warm. Once I was settled in the back of the cave, the three men squatted near each other and began talking in low voices, all in that strange, guttural language.

Two of them, including my rescuer, were wearing broadswords while the third had a smaller, sleeker sword strapped to his waist. All three of them were bearded, and one of them wore chain mail.

I was in Generic Medieval Fantasy Land.

This. Sucked.

My perception of time hadn't been that badly skewed, so they couldn't have been talking for more than ten minutes before one of them came over to me. He was my rescuer, and I noticed he seemed a bit older than the other two, but in the failing light I couldn't make much more out. He said something to me, several long sentences in his weird language, none of which I understood.

"I don't speak your language!" I said back, my teeth chattering. "My name is _Priscilla Henders_. I live in Magnolia, Texas. I'm seventeen years old. Do ya'll have any idea what I'm saying?"

He actually winced subtly and put a hand to his ear, as if my language was physically hurting him. Well tough boogers, I couldn't understand you either. He looked back at his two friends as if proving a point, and I tucked my cold chin a little closer to my chest. The hot surge of tears took me by surprise, and I sniffed as quietly as I could. Why was I here? I wanted to wake up, I didn't want to bumble around with these morons any longer. As if in response, my ankle gave a painful twinge as if to say _You're not unconscious. And you're not in Kansas anymore, Toto._

I sure wasn't. I had fallen down the rabbit hole into the worst possible situation. I was surrounded by people who didn't speak my language, and might decide to kill and/or rape me if they got bored. I hadn't seen any example of hostility, but for all I knew, these people were bloodthirsty tyrants. I also seemed to be in the twelfth century, complete with knights in not-so-shining armor. If they cut me loose, I would be completely unable to fend for myself, as I didn't have any methods of survival. I knew how to shoot, and could take down game if I had my .22 with me, but judging from these guy's clothes guns wouldn't be invented for another couple centuries.

He watched me cry for a moment, and then took a seat next to me. The man muttered something in his language which sounded suspiciously like a curse, and I curled up as best I could with a bandaged ankle.

I wanted out of this.

* * *

.

.

.

**Constructive criticism is vastly appreciated. Forgive me if Priscilla is too cliched – I've never been to Texas and have met a total of three people who grew up there. My assumptions are based purely on them.**

**My message to the guest reviewer who told me that I shouldn't include Priscilla having her period in this story:** Am I supposed to assume that once teenage girls 'magically' get dropped into Middle Earth, they no longer have a uterus? I've read dozens of these 10th Walker stories, and not a single one of them has addressed this. I'm going to try and put her in as many realistic situations as possible. Granted, having her get discovered by people so early is a bit unrealistic, but as they're not related to the Fellowship and she would die of exposure otherwise, it needed to happen. If you are squeamish about realism, then I suggest you look elsewhere. There are literally thousands of other 10th Walker stories that don't deal with this problem. Go find them.

_[Six reviews received.]_

_Thank you to **quaff, Petaldawn, NoAccount, Baroque, and two guests.**_


	3. Chapter 3: Ye Olde Medieval Village

**Previously...**

_Priscilla discovered it's hard swimming through a lake into a new world, and stumbled around like a bumbling idiot through the woods. Before she died of exposure and hypothermia, an angel of heaven (a.k.a., a random stranger) found her and brought her back to camp. There, Priscilla found that the new world she now occupies does not have residents that speak English. This is depressing to her._

* * *

**. Chapter Three .**

_(In which our intrepid heroine tries to communicate and discovers she's alone.)_

* * *

I squinted up at the daylight which had just begun to rise over the treetops, and wished I hadn't been woken up. Don't get me wrong, I've woken up before dawn before, since cows don't feed themselves. But there's something distinctly uncomfortable about waking up before sunrise after you'd slept sitting upright and in the back of a damp cave. Especially since I'd swam for my life only hours before and been dropped into a surreal dream only moments before that. So the sunrise wasn't exactly greeted with jubilation, but instead I swore under my breath and continued limping along behind my saviors. Or captors. I wasn't quite sure what they were going to do with me – as far as I knew, we were heading deeper into the wilderness.

However, the light did come with a benefit; I could now see my rescuers in more detail. The man who had rescued me was taller and thicker than the other two men who followed behind him, and he had dark brown, curly hair that was streaked liberally with gray. He had flinty green eyes that were permanently creased, and a roughly trimmed beard. To my guess, he was about forty or fifty years old, but it was difficult to tell beneath all the fur and mail he wore. His two companions were radically different, and carried themselves with more bounce in their step. One of them looked to be about my age, with soft black hair and questionable facial hair, but his dark eyes were very hard and didn't tell much. The other man seemed friendlier, and kept glancing over at me, tossing thick dark hair out of his eyes.

The older man had splinted my ankle firmly and it felt a little better, but I was still barefoot except for a few rags, which had been ripped from one of the men's tunics. The youngest one, the one with the soft black hair (I'd begun calling him Blackbeard mentally, even though his beard looked about as stable as Leonardo DiCaprio's) carried a heavy pack slung over both shoulders. It took me nearly an hour of staring to determine that he was carrying a pack of skinned animals, and the furs had been strapped to the top of the pack.

That...was kind of disgusting.

We couldn't have been walking long, since the sun hadn't cleared the treetops, but already I was cold, tired, and hungry. The older man, who I nicknamed Bigfoot, had given me a piece of dried jerky which tasted like spiced shoe leather and was about as difficult to chew. It didn't fill me up very much, and my jaws ached from gnawing at it. So I was pretty miserable, and I'll admit, I kept crying for a little while as we walked, simply because I was homesick and wanted a bit of attention.

I didn't get it. My ankle had swollen to twice its normal size before we stopped around noontime, and I realized the three men had been taking it easy on me. That thought made me even more depressed, but I wiped my eyes and hobbled over to a tiny, icy cold stream which ran along the rugged path we had been following. The rest of my body felt cold, but my ankle was hot and throbbing, so I unwrapped the bandages as best I could and stuck my ankle into the stream.

The younger man, the one with the helmet and friendly eyes, came over to me and said something in that bizarre, guttural language. I looked up at him dully. "No comprendo gibberish, bub," I grunted, hoping my eyes weren't as swollen as they felt. He looked back towards the other two men, who were talking quietly and looking at me.

The young man tapped his chest. "Rhó," He said. I blinked. He tapped his chest again. "_Rhó_."

"Row?" I said, cocking my head to one side.

He nodded, and I realized his eyes weren't black at all – they were dark brown. "Rhó."

Apparently Row was his name. I poked myself in the ribs. "Priscilla," I said slowly. "_Priscilla_."

"Preesilla?" He said, and smiled. "Preesilla."

"_Priscilla_," I corrected. I pointed at him. "Row."

Row and Preesilla. Not bad for a Knight of the Round Table, or whatever he was. An idea hit me, and I scooped up a handful of water. "Water." I told him, trickling the water into his palm. "Water. _Water_."

He splashed a few fingers in the stream and let the water drip into my palm. "Seeka," He informed me.

We went on, and frankly it took my mind off my ankle. Through hand gestures, pictures in the mud, and a scattering of broken English words, I managed to ask "Where am I?" The answer took nearly twenty minutes to explain and decode, and both of us were very frustrated by the end of it. He gave me two answers – one, which meant half dirt, and the other, which meant horse. Of course, I had about a forty percent chance that what I understood was correct, and by the end we subsided, blocked by our language barriers.

Rhó went over to Blackbeard and Bigfoot and the three of them fell into a rapid, animated conversation. I got the feeling that poor Rhó was grateful for other people who understood him, and I splashed my ankle in the water, feeling a little more miserable. I didn't have anyone to talk to. I couldn't go down the street and pick up a McDonald's hamburger because there _was_ no McDonald's. I wouldn't be able to teach my baby brother how to swim because I would never see them again. I was stuck here, with a gimp leg and no-one to talk to because Moe, Larry and Curly over there didn't speak English.

I was a tough girl. But I'll admit, I burst into tears just then, and didn't stop until I felt Bigfoot helping me to my feet.

* * *

We walked.

I learned a few things as we traveled with discouraging slowness – I learned that the boys in my company were _amazingly_ polite when it came to stopping to go to the bathroom. After holding it for two days, I finally broke down and went behind a tree with a few leaves. Blackbeard, Bigfoot, and Rhó waited silently on the path, busying themselves in opposite directions. I also learned that Blackbeard was a man of very few words, and could wring off a rabbit's neck with one quick motion. Whatever language they spoke sounded like a cat hacking up a hairball, but I started to learn the difference in their voices. I learned that walking for three days barefoot will give you some nasty bruises and cuts, and that Rhó was much stronger than he looked, since he carried me over one shoulder for the better part of an afternoon when I simply couldn't move.

One evening, as I rewrapped the rags around my feet and drew Blackbeard's cloak a little tighter around my shoulders, I realized that there was smoke in the distance. All of a sudden, the boy's tones got lighter, more cheerful, and Bigfoot actually slapped Rhó on the back. Noises started to wash over me, and the path we had been walking on melted into a wide, well-trodden road. After slipping over wet sticks and falling over broken logs for the better part of a week, the sight of a flat, smooth road was a sight for sore eyes. I dragged myself behind my companions, feeling a little more confused and worried. We had settled into some sort of a routine, these past few days, and now it was about it end.

The village I had been expecting wasn't a village, it was a _town_. The dirt road was very flat and stretched from one end of the town to the other, and actually had a few smooth rocks implanted in it here and there. I had been expecting huts and skinned animals outside on cooking fires – there was solid stone structures on both sides of the road, and dirty little children running back and forth. A mangy dog was tied up outside, and he bared his teeth at us as we passed by. The noise was terrific; apparently the town had a blacksmith, and he was hammering away at something in a low stone house, the metallic blows ringing out everywhere.

I was in an incredibly realistic Ye Olde Medieval Times. Hurrah.

A woman with blood smeared all over her hands and wrists came pelting out of a little wooden hut, I flinched automatically but Blackbeard – young, stodgy, silent Blackbeard – let out a whoop and picked the woman up. They kissed full on the mouth, and I felt a little pang in my belly. I looked up at Rhó, who raised his eyebrows in the universal wolf-whistle expression, and I laughed in spite of myself. Bigfoot ignored their display of affection and instead settled his hand on my shoulder, steering me towards the largest building in the village.

It wasn't a chapel, like I had expected – it was a tavern. Wooden stools were clustered around a fire and a few tables, but there seemed to be plenty of people who were content with sitting on the floor. Most of the men were gathered around a table, throwing stones and playing what looked like a game of chance, and a big-bellied man behind the bar was whittling. As we drew closer, I realized that he was carving a new mug; a pyramid of wooden mugs were wiped clean on the rickety bar. It was dark, since the only light came from the fireplace and a lantern on the bar, and the open door which let in a bit of pale gray light.

The large man behind the counter raised thick eyebrows at Bigfoot and Rhó, and they had a conversation which sounded like three dogs gargling. I was never going to learn this language. Bigfoot gestured at me once or twice, and I felt instantly conspicuous. My fiery orange hair, which had dried to a massive flaming ball of frizziness, was full of leaves and badly needed a proper wash. I stank. I was full of burrs and my legs looked terrible, all scratched by branches and bruised by rocks. I was being swallowed by Blackbeard's enormous cloak, but beneath that I just wore a pair of cutoff jeans and a tank top. My ankle was still swollen and had faded to a nasty looking red band of puffiness.

All in all, I looked like a wild animal.

To my shock, Bigfoot dropped a few beaten gold coins on the bar and pushed them over to the bartender, who accepted them readily. The bartended folded his arms across his chest and chewed the inside of his cheek, as Rhó gave me a very long, odd look, and then left. Bigfoot, to cap off my surprise, dropped a kiss onto the crown of my head, which felt a little insulting and made me feel weird.

Then the two of them left. I was in the hands of a stranger.

* * *

**.**

**.**

**.**

**Short chapter, I'm afraid, since my mind has been elsewhere, but it needs to be updated. :) Shame, I was rather enjoying Bigfoot and co., but hopefully they'll make room for the Fellowship in a few more chapters.**

**Also, I'll be the first to admit that there's a grand total of twenty-six canonized Westron words, so I'm pretty much pulling stuff out of my sleeve here. I'll try to do better in later chapters.**

**.**

**.**

_[Eleven Reviews Received.]_

_Special Thanks to: _**quaff**, **sarathestarkidranger**, **covewarrior**, **GreatIceDragon,** **TheGirlInTheBackground,**

**Petaldawn, EEJJ, annafan, Diana Silver, KoreanAloeJuice, Emm, **and **Abbalina.**

_Blown away by all the reviews I've received! You guys rock! 3 Thank you so much for your opinions and feedback._


	4. Chapter 4: Medicine Woman's Assistant

**Previously...**

_Priscilla tries to communicate with her new friends, and discovers their language is totally alien. No surprise. They walk for a very long time, which is very boring, and finally end up in a small town. Her companions dump her in the hands of a bartender and make themselves scarce, much to Priscilla's terror._

* * *

**. Chapter Four .**

_(In which our intrepid heroine gets a bath and becomes a medicine woman's assistant.)_

* * *

I consider myself a capable girl. You don't grow up on a ranch in Texas and not learn how to take care of yourself, especially in a tight spot. But I'd never learned how heavy a wet bucket of water can weigh when you're tired, and I'd never picked up the skill of bathing myself in freezing water. I'd never scrubbed my skin raw with gritty soap before, and I'd never shared a bathroom with two other women while I stripped down to my panties. (I refused to wash myself buck naked while other people were watching.) I got a crash course in all of these things right after the Three Stodges left me in the hands of the bartender. He deposited me in the back room with two other girls who looked to be about my age or a little older, and both of them had no problem unlacing each other's corsets and sharing a bath. At the time, I found it a bit off putting, but I learned right quick that the water is _ice cold_. You need all the body heat you can get in that tub.

The girls dried themselves off with a pretty dirty looking wool blanket while I scooped cold water over myself to rinse off. I couldn't lower myself to wash my hair – even if I wanted to stick my head into that filthy water, I don't think I could have managed. The tub was incredibly small, and my knees were jammed against my chest the whole time. When I finally squeezed out of the slippery, cold tub, I grabbed for the wool blanket and wrapped it stubbornly around my torso, tucking it under my armpits. The two girls had taken away my tiny pile of clothes and instead left me with a skirt, a blouse, and a corset. The last time I had worn anything resembling a skirt had been on Easter, and the idea of lacing up a corset had me wrinkling my nose.

Smiling, the two teens ignored my expression and helped me lace up. First, I had to tie the drawstring of my skirt; no fancy elastic waistbands in the Medieval times. Then, I had to tuck my blouse into my skirt and tie the sleeves above my elbows, so they wouldn't get in the way. Without my bra, the thin material showed a little more than I was comfortable with, so I struggled only minimally as the two girls pulled the corset tightly around my waist. It made my breasts pop out alarmingly, holding them firmly in place and making me feel like some kind of burlesque dancer. Beneath the skirt, I had bare legs and the pair of wet panties, which the girls traded for a pair of very odd looking underwear that had to be tied at the hip, and fitted like a pair of bloomers.

"I'd like to let ya'll know that this is the weirdest get-up I've ever worn, and that includes that sissified rodeo clown costume," I muttered, but the girls ignored my ramblings just as they ignored my facial expressions. Both of them looked similar, with high foreheads and small noses, and I wondered if they were sisters.

Once I had been washed and redressed, the girls pointed me out the door with exaggerated motions. Obviously, they thought I was retarded or something. I gritted my teeth against the shivering and stepped into the too-warm tavern, where the bartender looked me up and down approvingly. To my surprise, Rhó and Blackbeard were sitting at the bar and talking to the bartender in a low voice. When I stepped into the room, Rhó got to his feet and came over to me. He said something in his rapid language, adding "Preesilla" in the middle of it, and he obviously wanted me to do something.

I followed him over to the bar, where I sat on one of the unevenly made stools and looked from Blackbeard to the bartender. Blackbeard scratched a few symbols on the countertop with an intimidatingly large knife, and tapped it with his fingers. It looked like a couple of letters, but for the life of me I couldn't read what they said. I took the knife from him and scratched "A B C" into the wood beneath his symbols. "There," I said. "That's my writing. I don't know what yours is, though."

The three men fell into deep conversation again, and I started to feel a little put-upon. You know the feeling when you were very small, when a lot of adults were laughing at a joke you didn't get, and you felt like a little kid? That's how I felt. Only they weren't laughing, they were having a conversation which seemed to be about me. I hugged my elbows and felt silly but not like crying, since right now I was sort of curious about this. I couldn't exactly tell them where I came from – how do you say "Texas" or "America" in sign language, anyway? – and they couldn't tell me where I was, either.

Blackbeard was becoming more agitated, and I noticed that his voice had a commanding ring to it, and the bartender was growing increasingly anxious. I noticed for the first time that the man who had found me was very authoritative, and he was beginning to intimidate the bartender. Rhó and I exchanged a glance that communicated even with the language barrier: _Should we do something?_

Whatever fight the two men engaged in, Blackbeard apparently won, because the bartender resumed his whittling and refused to look at the big warrior. Blackbeard settled a hand on my shoulder and brought me outside, there the bright gray overcast sky made me squint. Rhó said something quietly to Blackbeard, who sighed deeply and rubbed the bridge of his nose with a gloved hand.

The two men escorted me down the center of the road, and we drew a lot of attention. Most of the people working outside cast wary glances in our direction, and ragged little children stopped and stared. I wondered if it was me, or the sight of my rather intimidating companions which caused them such fascination. When we reached the end of the street, there was the low level stone house that had a mangy dog picketed outside, and the dog bared its teeth at us. Rhó knocked on the door and then went in, ducking under the low lintel. We followed him, and smell of damp smoke stung my eyes and made them water.

Rhó was on one knee, talking to something wrapped in a bundle of old rags. I kept my head hunched against my shoulders, since there were bundles of dried herbs hanging from the ceiling and they were dangerously close to tickling my neck. A low fire burned in a fireplace, but seemed to be leaking smoke everywhere; it was a good thing there were plenty of cracks in the door. Unlike the tavern, there were colorful rugs on the floor and a small cot in the corner of the room, close to the fireplace. A little table with one chair was in the center, and there was a big metal pot simmering over the fire.

The bundle of cloth moved, and I saw a flash of white hair.

A very old woman stood slowly, getting to her feet with the assistance of Rhó's arm. She was _tiny_, with thick white hair drawn back in braid which fell over one shoulder. Her skin was nut brown and wrinkled, and alert dark eyes gave me the impression of a small, old animal in a burrow. She came up to me and stood on tiptoe, gripping my cheeks with her fingers, which were knobby and surprisingly strong. I jerked away from her. "Ow!" I yelped, rubbing at my cheeks. "Take it easy!"

She ignored me and peered determinedly into my eyes. I stood there, feeling useless for a moment, and then all the hair rose on my body. A weird feeling washed over me, like someone had doused me in a bucket of static, and I shuddered. The old woman said something to Blackbeard and Rhó, who both tensed. The woman shuffled over to the little table and picked up a mortar and pestle, grinding away at something in the large bowl. She reached up and jerked a herb off the ceiling, then sprinkled it in the substance she was grinding. Then she spat in it.

I wasn't delighted about the idea of old lady spit being smeared on my cheek, so I flinched when she came over and streaked something across my face. Automatically I reached up to wipe it off, but she whacked my knuckles with her hand. I got the idea and waited, scowling a little as she watched me seriously. After what seemed like ten seconds, she nodded, and said something else.

Both of the men sighed in relief.

She turned around and the two of them had another conversation I couldn't follow, but this one was more succinct. Rhó came over and put his hands on my shoulders, pressing me firmly into the ground as though he wanted to root me. Then he embraced me swiftly, kissing each cheek (avoiding the streak of mud, I noticed), and whispered something in my ear. Blackbeard came over and did something far more practical. He gave me a knife, which felt big and familiar in my hands. Sure, it wasn't my big Leatherman which I was used to, or my skinning knife, but it was nearly as big and twice as sharp. I tucked it into the pocket of my skirt and smiled at him.

This felt like farewell, not like the abrupt departure of last time. I got the heavy feeling that I wouldn't see either of them again, and I swallowed hard. I hoped that wouldn't be true. The little old woman held my wrist firmly as the men left, but I made no attempt to pull away from her. Getting left in the hands of an old medicine woman felt a lot better than getting left behind in a tavern.

I only hoped that I would see my friends again soon. But I doubted it.

* * *

**.**

**.**

**This chapter is very short, but I hope it sufficed. Expect a time skip in the next chapter, since I'm sure you're all getting tired of people having conversations nobody can understand. **

_[Eight reviews received]_

_Thanks To: _**LalithElerrina, Pergjithshme, madamezou, quaff, Avespa Strife, Souffl3Girl, **and **N. M. Marquette**_. You guys are all amazing, and please keep reviewing! Thank you so much!_


	5. Chapter 5: Less-Than-Friendly

**Previously...**

_Priscilla takes a very uncomfortable bath, gets dressed in very uncomfortable clothing, and then gets dropped off at the house of a medicine woman. Which is also very uncomfortable. There is also a very uncomfortable goodbye from her three friends. Uncomfortable. Doesn't sound like a word any more, does it?_

* * *

**. Chapter Five: Less-Than-Friendly .**

_(In which our intrepid heroine tries to learn a language and nearly gets killed.)_

* * *

"Cilla! Bring the water, lazy girl!"

I muttered a few choice words under my breath as I struggled towards the town well. Malenkaya, the medicine woman who had taken me in, didn't possess a patient bone in her body and expected me to adhere to that. Being incredibly old – and now quite accustomed to someone doing all her chores for her – she seldom moved from her tiny hut. I lugged the heavy bucket of water towards her house and ducked under the low lintel. Inside, as usual, was dimly lit from the embers of a fire which needed to be coaxed back into open flame.

Three months. Three months full of sickness, crying, less food, even less warmth, and the constant struggle of a language barrier. Malenkaya had been teaching me Westron, which was what their language was apparently called, but I could only communicate very slowly, with a good deal of hand gestures thrown in. It was frustrating as all get-out, to say the least. Not to mention the huge amount of cravings I had been going through. Malenkaya ate a very vegetable heavy diet, and she practically a twig a day. I couldn't live on such stuff, but the only other option was learning how to kill game. That idea made me a little squeamish.

I would kill anything, though, for a bag of potato chips and a box of Twinkies.

In the past three months, the weather had gotten significantly colder at night, and my body had gotten quite hard. I hadn't been in this good of shape since I tried out for Miss Magnolia. (I lost – no surprise there.) The days of an average person here were filled with work – it was work to get the fire started in the mornings, work to find food, work to keep warm, and in between all that, work to fill orders for medicine. Malenkaya was the town's healer, and before too long I was taking care of broken bones, rotten teeth, and stomach flus.

My specialty, thank goodness, was animals. Cows, chickens, and dogs I could all manage, and especially since I grew up in a household full of these. Thankfully there were few pregnancies, since Malenkaya was always called upon to help deliver babies, but there were a great many deaths. I saw six people scream out and die from a disease that crippled our small town.

Diseases were rampant everywhere, and the villagers, who had always regarded me as a demon-girl despite my protests, thought I was insane for continually cleaning everything. I carried a small rag around with me, to wipe off door handles and cooking pots. I boiled everything, from our drinking water to our wooden spoons. I was sick as a dog for two weeks, unable to do anything but throw up and cough, since the change of food was completely alien.

Did I mention the food sucked? No? Well, it does. Leaves mostly, and even stewed they had a immensely bitter flavor. Usually the townspeople traded in game, so whenever Malenkaya healed someone, they would reward us with a plucked chicken or a dead rabbit. I had skinned animals before, but this was different somehow. I never had to skin something for my own survival.

All of my survival skills – the kind you get growing up down South – seemed veritably useless without common necessities. I didn't have a lighter or matches, stewpots, electricity, metal utensils, or even better clothing. Oh, yeah, I forgot to mention the clothes; I washed mine every two days, since things took forever to dry, and I only had two sets of clothes. Malenkaya was teaching me how to stretch and work with leather, and since then I had been trying to sew my own pair of boots. The boots I wore now were far too big.

I splashed some water into the cooking pot and rubbed some gritty spices from the mortar and pestle. Malenkaya looked up from her bundles of blankets. She was always cold.

"Bring tea, Cilla," she commanded, but in a gentler tone. I poured the lukewarm tea into a wooden mug and gave it to her gingerly. Satisfied, she took a sip, and I reached for my shawl. _Shawl_ – what a silly word. But it was warm and knitted and staved off the autumn chill. Until I could save someone's life in return for a deer pelt, there was no way I was getting a cloak of my own.

"I'm going outside," I said, pronouncing as carefully as I could. "To talk to..." I stumbled. "Traders, traders. Talk to traders."

You'd be amazed how quickly you can pick up a language when there's nobody around to speak English. But I was still learning slowly – a fact Malenkaya reminded me every day.

"When you come back, we do talking lessons," she said firmly. "Come back before noon."

I hurried outside and tucked the ends of my shawl into my belt so I could have my hands free. Every two weeks, traders would come to the town and peddle trinkets and more valuable things. I always stopped to ask them if they'd seen Rhó; some of them had, some of them hadn't. From information that was reluctantly given to me, Rhó and Bigfoot (his name was Aytun, I discovered) were mercenaries. That, in part, explained why my arrival was treated with such suspicion, and why I was still ostracized to this day.

There were plenty of traders calling attention to their craft, and I worked my way through the crowd. Most of them I had talked to before, and then shook their heads when I inquired of Rhó again. This was getting old, and getting frustrating. I felt a rumble in my belly and cinched my belt a little tighter. I heard a good quantity of more useful things though – things like monsters moving through the lands, and goblins on the move.

I know, I know, there's no such thing as goblins. But take my word for it, after you spend so long in a new place, you come to believe anything. I heard about goblins, trolls, giants, and wizards. They were spoken of more often than in legends, and although I had never seen anything they talked about, I took for granted that the world I was now in had plenty of magical creatures scurrying around.

This started me wondering about my survival rate in this place. With goblins, trolls, and giants (oh my!) running around, plus disease and poor food, how long could I honestly last?

I brushed this thought off and started mingling through the crowds again. Someone caught my eye.

He wasn't trying to sell wares like the rest of the traders; he had his hood drawn over his face, and all I could see was a hooked nose and a pipe. Hands, clad in fingerless gloves, came up to pull the pipe back and blow a smoke ring across the town square.

Boldness gallops through my family. I walked right up to him.

"Greetings," I said, in my most practiced sentence, "I am inquiring as to the well-being of a friend."

"Oh?" he asked around his pipe. I saw grey eyes, very sharp and flinty, looking at me. "And what friend might that be?"

"Rhó and Aytun, they usually travel together. They're mercenaries. The last I heard, they were heading towards Rohan." I pronounced the last word carefully, since I really had no idea where that was. Three months, and I had yet to see a map. News travels fast, my foot.

"Mercenaries, aye?" The man took another draw on his pipe and scowled. "Men offering their blade for money, ridding villages of Orcs and goblins in exchange for gold?"

_Orcs?_

This was the first time I'd heard of Orcs.

"Yes," I said slowly, stepping closer. "Have you seen them?"

The man didn't answer for a moment, and then asked, "Your accent is strange. Where are you from, child?"

"Far away," I snapped back. I had gotten asked this question too many times – no matter how neatly I said it, nobody understood "Texas" or "America". Plus, the word "Orcs" was still rattling around my brain. "Have you seen my friends?"

"A temper is unbecoming on a lady," he said lightly. Did I see a spark of approval in those grey eyes, or was it just lack of food playing tricks?

"Unhelpfulness is unbecoming on _you_," I asked. "Fine, never mind. I give up. Ya'll go ahead and be mysterious." I muttered under my breath, in English. Too often I fell back on my old language, cheating and saying nasty things about people in words they couldn't understand. I guess this is where I got my nickname of devil-girl; people thought I was putting spells on them.

"And that is a tongue I have not yet heard," he said. Or I guess that's what he said; he was talking more quickly now, and I was struggling to keep up. "Where are you from? Not from Gondor, surely. The West?"

"The south," I said, walking away. "So down south, corn grows in my toes."

It probably didn't help I said this in English. I didn't realize I had until after I'd said it. I felt his eyes boring into my back as I headed back towards Malenkaya's hut.

* * *

I went down to the river to think. There was a nice little river where I washed my clothes every few days, and got fresh water to boil when I wanted to wash up. Fish, too, whenever I had the necessary materials to make a fishing lure and rod. There was a nice big rock where I like to sit and think whenever life pressed down around my ears. I quoted Bible verses and sang songs on that rock – I wondered if my family was looking for me. The rock had absorbed many, many tears over the weeks and months. I talked in long, never-ending prayers to God there, and wished my brothers luck. That rock was literally my rock to the rest of the world.

Orcs. That was something in the Lord of the Rings novel. But that was ridiculous; this wasn't Lord of the Rings. I had given up on my coma theory long ago, since all of this was much too real to be a coma. I didn't know the name of the _world_ I was in – just the town. Enflas, they called it, and from what I understood it was a fairly new, small settlement. That explained the lack of filth.

I didn't know much about Lord of the Rings. Truth be told, I had never been a big reader, but I had seen the movies with my brothers. Being little boys, they loved the sword fighting and monsters. I remembered some of it, but I knew enough of it to know that this didn't look anything like Middle Earth. It could be a coincidence; I could be in a world with another monster called Orcs. Maybe they were nothing like Tolkien Orcs.

I just didn't have enough information.

There's a good chance I may have just sat there on the rocks, wondering where I was and how long I would be staying there, but I smelled the smoke.

Smoke has a very distinct smell. It curls up your nose and scrapes the inside of your lungs, making the hair on the back of your neck rise up. There was a thin, far-off scream. I scrambled off the rock and ran back towards the town at a dead sprint, hearing the crackle of flames.

Another scream split the air. Then another one, louder and louder as I drew closer.

Flames were racing along the dry rooftops of the small houses, scorching the solid stones. I heard the terrified squeals of horses as flames devoured the barn; I kicked the door hard as I passed by, and a gelding behind it took it the rest of the way. The horses crashed through the door and out into the street, stampeding around me and heading off into the woods. I ran straight for Malenkaya's hut, but was stopped by...

A monster.

There's really no other word for it. Words couldn't do the creature justice. He was tall, but bow-legged and humped-back, maybe two generations removed from walking on all fours. Huge, pointed ears with fur sprouting along the folds were laid flat against the sides of his narrow head, and there were ugly chains running from ear to ear. Slitted eyes, yellow and crusted at the corners, glared at me, and it bared its teeth – it's _maw_, I should say – and revealed rotten fangs. Leather armor hung on his lean frame, and there was a chipped cutlass in his right claw.

In his left claw, there was a severed head.

A scream built up inside me and tore out of my throat, and I ran away in the opposite direction. The creature roared and took after me; with a single bound, I felt the dirty claws sinking into my shoulder, tearing through my dress and shawl. I shrieked again, this time out of pain instead of fear, and whirled around. I kicked out at him but missed, and then brought my fist down on his head. His hands were still bloody, and I felt the cutlass bite into my neck.

This is it. This is dying.

"_Oh God please no please please don't kill me oh God oh God oh God –!"_

The creature stopped. In a voice of broken glass and sandpaper, it snarled, "Who are you?"

"Get away from me, get away! Don't touch me!" I shrieked, and stamped on his foot. He had boots on – I did not. I think you know who came off with the more badly injured foot. My knee jabbed into his groin area, which was also armored. I didn't even know if these..._things_...had any man bits to maim.

He drew back the cutlass again and I watched it come down, my mind clicking in frames.

_Whop!_

A dull sounding noise and a cudgel was brought squarely down on the monster's head. Behind the monster, still swathed in blankets, was Malenkaya, holding a thick wooden club clotted with blood and hair.

I hadn't seen her shuffle more than thirty paces since I'd lived with her, and now she was spryly fighting off monsters with the aid of a club.

I had no time to be annoyed, because I heard the maddened roar of a man, shortly followed by a bellow of agony. There were more monsters, and the fire was spreading. Coughing, I wheeled about, looking through the gauze of smoke and searching for a hole in the smog. We ran for it, the little old woman and I, and our path was blocked by another, terrifying monster. This one had a double-bladed axe, and it hung back for a moment, hefting the weapon in its hands. Our eyes locked.

"You!" it screeched, and charged towards me.

Me? What had _I_ done?

I didn't even think twice – I turned around and bolted again, but was confronted by another beast on the other side. There were three of them now – no, four – wait, now five – all penning me in. I heard a sickening crunch, and a strangled, gurgled yell, and I didn't even have to look to know it was Malenkaya. Tears stung my eyes.

"Come with us, human!" the monster growled, and I was hemmed in by ugly, naked, leather-hided beasts prickling with weapons. I was all-out crying now, the ugly kind of sobbing where my breath couldn't be caught. Smoke filled my lungs again and I coughed painfully, trying to back away from all the rusty weapons pointing at me.

Something seized my hair.

I don't know how many times this has happened to you, but getting dragged by your hair is an excruciating experience. It feels like you're getting scalped, and judging from the scabs I felt on my head later, the monster dragging me had no qualms about scraping my head with his dirty claws. My knees banged against the ground and I had no choice but to follow him as closely as I could, bent at the waist, still blubbering and swinging with my fists. I didn't even have time to stop and grab a rock, because whenever I had an idea about trying to escape, I would see something else horrific, and my belly would heave.

"You have no knowledge of this girl?" the monster roared, shaking me like a dead fish. I flopped about as much. "You said you have no _knowledge_ of this girl?

There was a wall of terrified looking townspeople all looking on, some of them armed, but most of them soot-stained and bleeding. It didn't register then, but later I thought, _The town that called me demon-girl tried to protect me? Huh. Who knew?_

"Move aside, and we shall not leave your stinking carcasses for the crows to feast on!" the leader growled again. The crowd parted quickly, pitchforks dropping to the dirt. My little band of monsters hauled me painfully through the crowd and onto the wide road which led out of town. I heard the crackle of flames, smelled the stench of the goblins. My stomach heaved, and I nearly threw up.

Once I had been dragged about ten paces, the leader of the goblins turned to his soldiers. "Leave nothing alive," he hissed, and four of them turned back to finish off the town.

I screamed, bucked against the grip on my hair. My whole scalp was on fire, and I felt blood trickling down my temple. I couldn't let the whole town die, I couldn't!

I heard piggish grunts, like cows being slaughtered, and the scrape of steel. My captor paused in his kidnapping of me.

The man I had spoken to earlier, the one with the grey eyes, had tossed back his hood and was standing with his sword tip pointing towards the ground. Oily black blood dripped off his sword, and the four bodies of goblins lay scattered on the ground in front of them. He had killed them in _seconds_.

He said something in Westron that I couldn't interpret because my brain had shut down.

I found myself dropped suddenly, and I ate a mouthful of dirt before I had the sense to roll away and curl into a ball. No matter how tightly I squeezed my eyes shut, I could still hear the deadly slice of metal against flesh, the groan of a goblin, the heavy thud of his corpse.

My legs felt like water.

He pulled me upright harshly, and I fell against him gracelessly. The townspeople started to gather around him, grateful, crying out praises, but he flinched away from their touch. Instead, he waved a hand and propelled me away from the town, away from the people, leaving them to put out the fires and tend to their wounded.

I couldn't make it more than a few steps past the tree line before I sank to my knees, coughing up smoke, and vomited up my breakfast.

Malenkaya. Dead. The only person I knew in this world.

I was still crying, but I tried to wipe them away.

I heard the scraping metal sound, and the cold, damp blade slid under my chin.

"Tell me who you are," the man said flatly, in a tone without mercy, "and why you have Orcs trying to bring you to their master."

* * *

**.**

**.**

**That was a despicably long time to keep everyone waiting for an update. Sorry, everyone, life got ahead of me. Hope this makes up for it! :) I think you all know who the hooded guy is, right?**

**.**

**.**

_[Eleven reviews received at this time.]_

_Special Thanks To:** Flarie, Avespa Strife, quaff, madamezou, Nurseratchet, Marine76, Darkheart Du Lac, Gigigue, Yuki Suou, XinnLajgin,** and one **Guest**. You guys are fantastic, and I'm so sorry to keep you waiting so long!_


	6. Chapter 6: Wham-Bam-Thank You, Sir

**Previously...**

_Three months had passed, and Priscilla became a halfway decent assistant to a medicine woman. She also learns quite a bit of Westron, although the language is still difficult for her. A mysterious hooded man is spoken with, and plants the idea on her mind that she may not be in just any different world, she may be in a fictional world. Scary. _

_Oh, and there's a completely terrifying attack on the village by Orcs. Also, the medicine woman is killed. Details, details._

* * *

**. Chapter Six: Wham-Bam-Thank-You...Sir .**

_(In which our intrepid heroine tries to explain herself and has the cramps.)_

* * *

My mother is a funny woman. She's very blunt, almost to the point of being offensive, and always calls it like she sees it. Something she was fond of telling me while I was growing up was, "Priscilla, I must say I have no idea what happened to you. In every person, there's a buffer between their brain and their mouth. You seem to have been born without one." Smart woman, my mother. But if she thought I spouted off under normal circumstances, she should have heard the gibberish that was flying from my lips when there was a blood-drenched sword under my chin and dead bodies not far away.

"I'm not from here, I'm from a different place, I've been here for ages, I swear I'm not going to hurt anyone, it wasn't my fault, I got pushed by a little kid and I think it was an accident, but I'm here and Malankaya's dead and I'm _so so sorry_, I didn't mean to hurt anyone, I don't know why those things were here or what they wanted with me!" I said, trying to crawl away. His boot came down hard on the hem of my skirt and I curled up away from him, shivering. My own vomit was inches away, and I tried to wriggle back towards the town. Maybe Malenkaya was still alive, maybe something could be done...!

"Cease your noise!" the man barked finally, and I realized belatedly that I had been speaking in English.

"I'm sorry!" I bawled back at him. Again, in English. My brain couldn't function properly, and I had to shake my head a few times before I could think of the words in Westron. "I am sorry, I do not understand!" I managed to stutter. It was one of the first phrases Malenkaya had taught me, since she reasoned I would use it most often.

"Be still," the man said, but the harsh edge was gone from his tone. He took the sword point away from beneath my chin and sheathed it, then stepped back. His brow was knitted together, and he looked confused, wary, and frustrated. I scrambled away and then got to my feet. I cast around for a rock, a stick, or anything to defend myself with.

"Please let me go back," I said, pointing towards the village. "I need to help."

The man shook his head. "They will not take you."

Uncomprehending, I tried again. "She could still be alive!"

"She is not."

I finally managed to look up and meet his eyes. I wanted – _needed_ – to make him understand how important this was to me. I needed to go back, to see if Malenkaya was all right, and if she wasn't...if she wasn't, I needed to bury her.

"Please." I tried to inject as much emotion I could into the foreign language he spoke. "_Please_ let me go back."

He said something, a phrase I didn't understand, but there was a word in it I recognized: _kill_. He gestured towards the smoking town and I understood what he meant. _If you go back, they will kill you._

I didn't particularly care at the moment. I turned away from him, and heard him call after me. Before I even knew what my feet were doing, I was running back to the village, my heels pounding against the dirt.

The fires had been put out, for the most part, but the air was heavy with smoke. Wailing was beginning all around me – a few women mourning their dead husbands, one little girl screaming her head off for her mother. My stomach heaved and banged against itself, but there was nothing to throw up. I kept running, a sour taste in my mouth. When I reached the town square, I was badly winded and a cramp was developing in my side. I stopped, panting, and saw two men carrying away Malenkaya's body.

"_Stop!_"

She was the only person I knew in this messed-up world.

They paused, and I saw her loose white braid hanging down, pointing towards the earth. It was matted with blood and grime. The world swam nauseatingly. I heard shouting, and the two men put down Malenkaya's body – dropped her much too roughly. They needed to treat her with some kind of respect...

I jerked back to the present when I saw a pitchfork coming at me.

I managed a brief yell of surprise and ducked out of the way, but the pitchfork stabbed at me again. "Demon girl!" the man shouted. His face was twisted with rage and so much grief it hurt to look. The pitchfork sliced through the air, and I backed away, palms open. "Kill the demon girl! She brought the Orcs!"

"No!" I pleaded. "No, I did not, let me see Malenkaya!"

"My wife is dead because of you!" the man roared, and I didn't stop to hear anything else. I whirled, trying to find my way back to the man who had saved me from the Orcs, but I was hemmed in by people. Soot-covered women, burned children, bleeding men, all glaring at me. All of them had weapons.

_Oh God_.

"Enough!"

It was the man who had rescued me. His voice cut through the crowd's noise, and he said something I didn't understand, although I definitely heard the words 'demon girl'. I was used to those words. I struggled, trying to remember my lexicon of Westron, and realized he was trying to convince the crowd to let me go.

"The blood of our children is on her hands!" a woman sobbed, pointing a shaking finger at me.

"Then let her sins be atoned for by me," he said grimly. I shivered violently – the edges of my vision were blurring. Was it tears or shock? A numbness, although not altogether a pleasant one, was spreading over my limbs.

The crowd fell to murmuring and angry glares. Someone shouted something, and the bedraggled crowd roared their approval. The man withdrew his sword and pushed his way through the crowd, and for the second time that day I felt a hand in my hair. But unlike the monster's, his nails didn't dig into my scalp, and he didn't pull and twist unnecessarily. My chin went back and I felt the blade at my throat again. I didn't even resist this time. What else was I going to do?

Maybe if I died, I would finally go home.

I strained against the blade at that thought, almost wishing he would push back.

He said something again, and from my garbled version I got the idea that he wanted to take me out of town and kill me. The townspeople didn't like that, and wanted him to kill me here. I stopped following the conversation after that, because an incessant whine built up in my ears, and then my knees turned to water.

I fell to the ground on all fours, and more chanting came from the crowd. They wanted me dead. The man was obviously trying to get me out of town, but I didn't care any more. I wanted to go home so desperately, I wanted to feel nothing and do nothing and _see nothing_. I didn't want to see Malenkaya's crusted blood in her braid. I didn't want to see that monster – or Orc, whatever it was called – standing with a severed head in his hand. I had just settled into some semblance of normality.

And then the whine grew louder, the darkness got bigger, and my will to stay conscious vanished completely.

* * *

There was a crackling fire a few feet away when I woke up.

I felt strangely clear-headed and rested, as if I had been sleeping for hours. Since it was pitch black outside, the only illumination coming from a rather pitiful fire, hours had certainly passed. I tried to sit up, and then became very aware that my hands were tied firmly behind my back, and my ankles were bound as well. I blew strands of hair out of my face and looked around. "Hello?" I croaked, my voice feeling weak and raspy. My face felt disgustingly dirty – you know how awful it feels to fall asleep crying, and you eyelashes kind of crust shut? That's what had happened. Not to mention I had blood and dirt all over my face.

The man who had rescued me (I needed to think of a shorter name for him, I was getting tired of thinking of him as The Man Who Had Rescued Me) was crouched near the fire. Since he had a pipe in his mouth, blowing smoke rings softly into the night air, I decided to call him Smokey Bear.

He did sort of _look_ like a bear – he was tall and stocky, with a thick chest and a proud, straight profile. Thick brown hair was pulled away from his face in a low ponytail, and his face was surprisingly beardless, although covered with the makings of one. His nose was hooked and his lips were full, but there was a scowl on his face and creases around his eyes and mouth.

"Who are you?" I asked, spitting out my hair. I struggled to sit up.

"The better question would be, who are you?" He looked at me with such blank caution and suspicion it felt like someone kicked me in the stomach.

"Priscilla Henders," I told him quietly. Even in my world, my name was weird – here, it probably sounded downright bizarre.

"Preesillaenders?" His scowl deepened.

I didn't bother correcting him. Instead, I laid back down and looked up at the stars.

I loved looking at stars. The skies of Texas were something to behold – huge open spaces, midnight blue velvet with such bright stars they seemed reachable. Here, the stars were even brighter, and seemed even closer – but none of the constellations were familiar. In three months, I had named most of the new constellations, giving them names like Cupid's Bow and Bugs Bunny. But it wasn't the same.

Even the stars had turned their back on me.

I know. I sounded like a total soppy, emotional woobie. But really, life had been pretty sucky for right now, and the only person I had somewhat trusted was dead, slaughtered by a monster under the bed. And not like a Monsters Inc., type monster.

So there I was wallowing in my self pity (or whatever a teenage girl was supposed to wallow in) for several long moments, until Smokey Bear spoke again. "Are you a spy for the enemy?" he finally asked.

"What enemy?"

He spat out what sounded like a wretched note of amusement and said nothing else.

I flexed my wrists. "Untie me," I told him. For all I know, I could have said "Un-knot me" or "Un-wrap me", but I hoped he got the message.

"No. I do not wish you to go running off. I have a friend who is learned in the arts of wizardry; he will be able to tell me where you are from."

A wizard?

A _wizard_? What the hell? Could he actually tell me where I could go home? Or better yet, tell me where I was, and how I had gotten here? Could he give me a map? Was there magic in this world? If there was, could he send me back home with a snap of his fingers? Electricity snaked inside me, and I felt hope tingling in my fingers. Or maybe it was a sign of malaria, I didn't know.

"When can we see him?" I asked, butchering the pronunciation in my excitement.

He took a moment – either wondering why I was happy, or trying to decode what I meant.

"In a week," he finally replied.

A _week_. I could go home in a week!

Did I mention delusional optimism runs through my family?

* * *

A week. Seven days. One fourth of a month. However you want to say it, that's how long I followed this guy with my hands tied behind my back.

Oh, sure, he was a nice enough dude – let me have my privacy when washing or going to the bathroom and whatnot. But as soon as I was done, bam! Back to watching me like a hawk. He asked me questions all the time, sometimes the same questions, trying to trip me up or something. I told him the whole story as best I could with my limited vocabulary. I'm not sure how often I repeated myself. _I come from a different world. I fell through a well and ended up here. I don't know where I am or what's going on._

Well, at least he told me his name. Kind of. It was Strider.

Which only added fuel to the whole "Am I in Middle Earth" argument that my sane mind was trying to suppress. Because accepting you're in a different world is one thing. But accepting that you were in a different, _fictional_ world?

Hell to the naw.

Call me delusional, if you want, or call me one of those stupidly stubborn people who ignore facts that stare her straight in the face. Maybe it was a coping mechanism, maybe I was just dim-witted, I don't know! But I refused to believe I was in Middle Earth.

So we kept walking.

Conversation wasn't exactly scintillating. He refused to answer any question about himself (besides the obvious ones, like Who Are You and Can I Stop To Go Pee). And the day before we reached whatever destination we were supposed to reach, I encountered a bigger problem.

"I need you to untie me," I told him firmly one afternoon. He raised an eyebrow, and I squirmed inside. This was so embarrassing, but it was his own fault for tying me up. If I was free, I could have taken care of this quickly and quietly. "I, um, need some rags."

His eyebrows lowered. (I would learn over time that Strider had extremely expressive eyebrows.) "My, um..." I tried to figure out a polite way of saying this. "My..._time _is happening." I didn't know how to say "month". "You know, with women, they have a _time_..."

Now I was just confusing him. I gritted my teeth against the urge to yell out something in English.

I clamped my thighs together and then pressed a hand against my lower belly. He had to understand what I was saying. "I need rags. Or tear my sleeves!" I brightened. "I need rags for..." I pointed at my thighs. "This. I need rags for this."

Did he just...

No. Impossible. Strider couldn't blush. It wasn't in him. He didn't possess the necessary facial muscles to look even _marginally_ embarrassed.

Unfortunately, even when I could take care of things myself, I wasn't out of the woods. My period was legendary for sending me terrible cramps and the foulest mood swings you could ever run into. Usually I chowed down on popcorn (oh God, not the food fantasies again, I couldn't take any more of those!) and waited it out after taking some Midol. But nope, not here! Here in...wherever I was, you got bitter roots and leaves. Thanks to Malenkaya being more interested in teaching me words than medicine, I didn't even know which roots and herbs she had given me. Whatever they had been, they'd worked like a charm. I had to settle for tearing off my sleeves and kind of stuffing them in my uncomfortable underwear, and then walking like a duck to keep the rags in place.

Even after all that, we kept walking. Only now I was annoying him, because I kept talking to myself in English, trying to stay sane and work through the worst of the cramping. I talked about my brothers, my parents, my schoolwork, my teachers, even childhood experiences. Somehow, everything I talked about always circled back to walking.

Because that's all we were doing. It wasn't like with Rhó and Aytun, where they were at least kind to me and tried to make the best of my incapability. Nooooope, this guy wanted to walk and not talk about anything, and thought I was some kind of _spy. _Then again, I did come here under suspicious circumstances...

Do you see what I mean about mood swings?

* * *

We arrived late on the night of the seventh day to a little clearing. It was surrounded entirely by rocks, more or less evenly spaced, and there was a worn out place in the center of the clearing where fires had obviously been built. Overhead, huge trees created a semi-roof, covering the place almost entirely in shade. Strider and I settled into the routine we had in the evenings; he would make a fire, while I unrolled his bedroll and spread his cloak over the ground (for me). Then, I would watch the fire and make sure it didn't go out while he went to find something to eat.

That night, he hit the jackpot and brought back a bird of some kind. In my hormone-drenched state, I teared up and had to look away while he plucked it.

I could practically hear him rolling his eyes.

However, in an hour or so, I was happily munching on whatever poor fowl Strider had caught, licking grease off my fingers and feeling grateful for meat. The two of us were feeling okay for once, with our bellies full and our faces hot, and then we both heard a crackle of branches and leaves.

There was a very tall man standing just outside the circle of rocks. He was draped in rough gray robes, with a huge, peaked gray hat on his head. A gnarled oaken staff was clenched in his fist, and a long silver beard hung past his chest. Extremely bushy eyebrows were stuck over a pair of pale eyes, but in the dim light I couldn't see much else.

If you opened a box labeled 'wizard', he would pretty much be what you pulled out. Minus the starry robes, I guess.

He greeted Strider, who had stood up instantly upon seeing him, and then thumped the ground with his staff. I felt the hair on the back of my neck rise, the same sensation I had felt when Malenkaya was testing me when I first met her. Like a bucket of static had been thrown over me. I shivered and rubbed my arms, to which the wizard glanced at me for.

"Gandalf," Strider said, and I stood up awkwardly. "I need to speak to you on a matter of utmost urgency."

"As do I, my friend," the wizard murmured.

I swallowed and sat back down as the two of them engaged in a rapid-fire, low-toned conversation. They were obviously in it for the long haul.

So when did I get to go back home, exactly?

* * *

**.**

**.**

**Ugh. Transition chapters are the worst. There's a bunch of references scattered in here, but my mind was really a mess while I was writing it. Life is so impertinent, intruding on our minds while we try to enjoy writing.**

**Something I think I need to make clear is that, while I have little tolerance for completely unrealistic GFIME stories...um, I've never actually read the books. *ducks* I tried, I honestly did, but I fell asleep through The Two Towers and I never went back. So this will be following the movie canon, which I do know much better. I'm sorry if that's a dealbreaker for some, but Tolkien's writing isn't for everyone. :) I hope you guys don't mind. I will still try to make everything as realistic as I can make it, and don't worry, she's not going to be falling in love with any of the Nine Walkers.**

_._

_._

_[Fourteen reviews received.]_

_Special thanks to:** Abbalina, Dolce Latte van Crème, N. , Flarie, sparklesaremylife, Borys68** (lol, Tiny), **Marine76, annafan, Yuki Suou, Alcarin Elen, SatelliteDreamer, Avespa Strife,** and two guests **(DT and LEALA)**._

_You guys are MIND BLOWING! Fourteen reviews!? How wild and crazy cool is that!? :D_


	7. Chapter 7: A Whole Mess of Trouble

**Chapter Seven: A Whole Mess of Trouble**

_(In which our intrepid heroine draws a map and runs into a bad spot.)_

* * *

Have you ever pressed a wrong button on your keyboard, and the whole screen just freezes? And then this weird white box pops up on the side of your screen with a bunch of gibberish running down it? That was kind of how my night went. The Wizard and Smokey Bear sat up almost until dawn, talking to each other in quiet voices, while I dozed off in spite of myself. I had originally decided to stay up with them, but frankly, my vocabulary wasn't stellar and I could barely follow what was they were discussing. They got especially antsy when I leaned forward and asked them to repeat something, which I did twice in the first five minutes. After dirty look from Strider – or Smokey Bear, whichever you prefer – I shut up and tried to get some sleep.

They were kind enough to let me sleep in, because when I woke up, dawn had already broken over the quiet little glade. The evenly spaced rocks around us still glowed faintly white from the chilly predawn hours, and I took a seat on one so I could stretch better. The wizard was nowhere to be seen, and Smokey Bear was asleep, propped up against a rock. He had one eye half open, and it kind of spooked me. He looked dead.

I guess talking all night can really wear a guy out, because the birds were singing shrilly by the time he stirred. I had poked at the fire and convinced it that staying lit was a good idea, hoping this would put him in a good mood. He stared down at me, sitting on the rock, and then abruptly padded off into the wilderness. Probably in search of food.

I cleaned up camp (which meant I rolled up his bedspread and folded his cloak) and then scratched my initials into the cool stone. I had a habit of doing this wherever I went, somehow thinking that someone could recognize my alphabet. Or maybe I just wanted the world to know I was here. I don't know, it was a pretty bad habit. By the time I looked up from my P.A.H (the A standing for Abigail), the Wizard was leaning on his staff and looking at me.

He was _really _old. I had never seen someone with such a long beard, either, and this was a girl who'd been to motorcycle rallies before. He could easily tuck it into his belt, or maybe into one of his gigantic sleeves that looked as though it could hide a small child. Everything was gray, gray, gray, from the tip of his big floppy hat to the scuffed toes of his boots. It was kind of depressing, actually.

The Wizard sat down next to me with a groan, and I nudged a bit away from him. Everything about him seemed..._weird_. Not like a bad weird, but there was some kind of aura around him that made my hair stand on end. He put a piece of thin bark on my knee and picked up a charred stick from the fire. "Draw me a map of your home," he said in a rather gentle voice.

I worried my lower lip for a moment. What would I draw? Well, America, of course, and then I'd outline Texas. I pictured the map of the country I had hanging in my classroom, and started drawing. It was hard to work with charcoal, as it kept smudging and messing up my lines. I drew a ragged rectangle with Florida poking out the bottom corner like a broken bone, and carefully outlined Texas as best I could. For the rest of the states, I drew a hasty checkerboard pattern that he would hopefully take to mean other cities.

I put a little dot over Magnolia. "There," I said, examining my crude drawing. A five year old could do better, but hey, you try to draw the USA off the top of your head and see how far you get.

He studied the piece of bark like I had found him an ancient artifact. By the crease between his eyebrows (there were actually a bunch of creases between his eyebrows, but this one seemed especially deep and worried) I guessed that he had no idea what I had just drawn.

I quickly wrote "America" over the checkerboards, then "Texas" on the smaller, more outlined state, and then finally "Magnolia" in smaller letters beside the dot. It felt good to write in English.

He folded the bark very carefully, and it disappeared into one of the folds of his robes. I guessed it was a pocket. Then, from another pocket, he pulled out a rather impressive buckthorn pipe and lit it with a coal from the fire. He asked me my name around the pipe, and I told him, pronouncing it as carefully as I could.

"Priscilla," he said, mimicking the syllables. "I do not know where you have come from. But strange things are happening in this world, very strange things indeed. I am on my way to visit an old friend, a friend who may be able to send you back to your proper place."

It was the longest phrase anyone had ever said to me that I understood, and even though my hopes for getting back home today were dashed, I was still kind of excited. Beneath his calm voice, I heard a thick note of skepticism. Mine was a hard story to swallow, I'll admit. "You cannot do this yourself?" I asked quickly. The man frowned and stroked his beard.

"I do not know from where you come, my child. There are dark, powerful forces at work that stay my hand. I wish to consult my friend, and to bring you to him as an example of what is happening in our world." He blew an impressive smoke ring into the air.

More walking, in other words. "Where..." I hesitated. "Where does he live?"

"Three day's journey from here."

_Terrific_. More walking. When would I ever get a chance to stop walking?

* * *

The Wizard was marginally more conversational than Strider had been, but then again, small rocks were more conversational than Strider. I spoke to him as eloquently as I could manage, but every time I slipped back into English he looked at me with a worried, unsure expression. I realized that I was a constant reminder to him that a strange alien had been dropped into this land and he had no idea how it had happened. Come to think of it, I'd like to know how it had happened as well, and if there was any chance of me getting home before another big disaster happened.

Traveling was much easier, since the Wizard – I'll call him Dumbledore – took a smooth, rather well-traveled path at first. It was cold in the mornings and evenings, but the noon sun was burning hot. I was constantly switching my shawl from around my shoulders to around my waist. Even so, the beautiful leaves were turning into foliage, and it was nice to see a forest speckled with colors. I had never seen much foliage growing up.

So we walked. I was getting rather accustomed to walking, but also pretty sick of it. During the afternoon of the second day I had a minor meltdown, swamped with food fantasies and self-pity. I would have sat down in the road and had a tantrum if I hadn't been so concerned about getting to our destination. Instead, I occupied myself by reciting all the recipes I could think of inside my head, and even inventing a few that sounded good to a hungry soul.

Finally, on the evening of the third day, we reached our destination.

And _what_ a destination, let me tell you.

A huge spike of a tower jutted upwards to the sky, a single straight column of black with spiky arches jutting off it. There were small balconies here and there, but for the most part the building seemed to be intent on being as tall as possible. It was a little frightening as well; the windows didn't have curtains as far as I could tell, and seemed to be just empty, vacant eyes staring at me. In front of us, a large green lawn spread out in what looked like a perfect circle, hemmed in by beautiful, tall oak trees. A small gravel path led to the main doors, which were impressively thick.

Before we even knocked, the doors opened and another man came out to greet us.

He was tall and thin, with high cheekbones and a triangular face. Very dark eyes glared dolefully from beneath bushy black brows, but his hair and beard were almost perfectly white. I said almost, because there was a narrow strip of black running through his beard. He joined my companion in the League of Extraordinary Beards and Robes – both were flowing and enormous.

When he spoke I went a little weak at the knees. You know when you encounter a voice that is so breathtakingly gorgeous you can't even listen to what they're saying? That was this guy. He had a voice that I can't even _begin_ to describe – smooth and rich and as deep as a lonesome cave. It was hinted with silver, a bit of sweetness, and let me tell you, I would have followed that voice off a cliff.

Which I kind of did. But more on that later.

We went inside, me following dumbly and feeling like a total hick, and went into a lowly lit room full of books and scrolls. The ceilings seemed to stretch straight to the tip of the tower, and I craned my neck to examine it. Feeling stupid, I quickly lowered my gaze and waited for the two of them to finish discussing. I knew better than to make polite conversation, since they didn't seem to appreciate being interrupted, so instead I took a seat on a high stool and waited. They paced and talked, and I tried not to eavesdrop.

But it was pretty difficult. My slowly expanding lexicon of Westron vocabulary made me want to listen for words I recognized. They talked for what seemed like forever, but since I had very little to entertain me, I don't know how long they talked. Before too long, they worked their pacing outside and the doors closed with a soft _boom_ behind them.

I hopped off the stool and walked around the room. There were books lining the shelves all around me, but they were so thick and heavy-looking that I left them alone, in case I dropped one of them on my foot or something. Instead, I picked up a scroll. This was also surprisingly heavy, but I unrolled it anyway and studied the characters. They were all so _strange_ – even though they were written smoothly, the letters looked rough and archaic. I was used to typed things, like books, webpages, and newspapers. It was just downright weird to see something handwritten like this.

Something caught my eye.

There was a small book – it probably caught my eye because of its size, since all the other books in the room looked forbidding and enormous. This one was small, with a soft leather cover.

More importantly than that, it looked _modern_. Very modern. I opened it and saw that it was totally blank, but appeared to be a kind of notebook/diary thing. The pages were lined, but the bottoms of the pages were numbered. I flipped to the back of the book where I saw very small words stamped on the binding.

_Made in China_.

My mind filled instantly with questions.

The doors opened and I hastily shoved the book back on the desk, my face flushing, feeling nosy and as though I was about to be yelled at. But both men didn't appear to see me at first, until I heard my name, very distinctly.

I didn't have to wait long. As soon as I heard my name, the Deep Voice Guy looked at me with such intensity I felt my throat seize up. He scrutinized me, and a very small smile spread beneath his beard. I didn't like that smile. It had horrible connotations. But he opened his mouth and said with that deep, beautiful voice, "Come with me, child."

Whenever he was talking, I felt like the whole world was full of pink clouds and dancing lambs. Everything was sunshine and rainbows, just so long as he kept talking. I tripped after him dreamily, my mind making an odd cross-connection to Pepé la Pew. He kept talking but I only heard one in every three words, and I got the feeling that I wasn't supposed to understand him at all. He kept talking in a lilting, soothing voice like the rocking of a boat, and I didn't find it a bit odd to be kneeling at his feet.

He kept talking, but now his voice was sharper. I felt as though I was climbing out of a deep vat of fudge, but not quickly enough; but the time my head cleared I saw thin, ghostly white ropes wrapping around my arms and torso. They glowed faintly, shimmering, and the more I twisted against them the tighter they got. I shrieked once, a high, thin sound like a sheet of paper ripping – and then my voice was gone, completely useless. I kept trying to scream, but nothing would come out. I struggled and pulled and tried to twist but it was no use; I remained on my knees, tears spilling out of my eyes, completely helpless.

"Now," the man said with that torturous voice, "_Tell me what you know_."

He pressed a thumb between my eyes.

Pain flashed behind my eyes, splitting my skull like a migraine. I couldn't scream or sob or even move, but every muscle in my body went rigid as I clenched my teeth. It felt as though he had dug a rusty nail in each ear, and unbidden, the stupidest of memories flickered behind my eyes. The day I painted my little brothers like Indians and we went whooping around the yard with fake bows and arrows. The day I stole a kiss from the preacher's son, and left him looking bewildered behind the barn. Last Christmas, when I got my first pushup bra, and my very oldest memory, when I was just a tiny thing pestering my parents.

There was a bang, a flash, and the memories stopped. My muscles loosened and I slumped over.

Stone floors are blessedly cool, and I let my cheek rest against the iciness for a moment before opening my eyes.

The two wizards were fighting.

I'm not going to try to describe a wizard's duel to you. I'm sure you'll just think of Harry Potter or something, which wasn't what this was at all. It was noise and shattering stone and breaking bones, roars of rage and whimpers of agony, all tangled into something I can't even imagine. With every spell they cast my body reacted against it, the sensations varying from vaguely uncomfortable, like static electricity, or even outright painful, like nails down a chalkboard. Every nerve in my body was on edge, and I was gritting my teeth and shutting my eyes, trying to stop all the sensations but I _couldn't_.

And then my limbs felt as though they were being attacked by a thousand tiny hot needles, and there was a huge thunderclap that split the whole world.

I opened my eyes warily, every part of me trembling. The ropes seemed to burn around my arms and legs.

The gray-robed wizard, my companion, was unconscious on the floor. Standing over him, his black spiky staff pointed at my friend's still form, was the white wizard. He turned around abruptly, his yellowed teeth bared in a grimace.

"I was not finished with my examination."

I screamed as loudly as I could before he simply took that ability away from me.

* * *

**.**

**.**

**That got...a bit dark at the end. Constructive criticism is vastly appreciated. I am also rather sick (just sniffles and whatnot) so I apologize for the lag between updates.**

_| Nine Reviews Received |_

_Special Thanks To: _**Borys68, annafan, Marine76, Avespa Strife, Yashida, quaff, Yuki Suou, **_and two guests: DT and Guest. _

_Super strength hugs go out to all of you guys! Can't believe I have an audience for my drivel, and I'm always delighted to see a new person weighing in._


	8. Chapter 8: Plain Old Miserable

**Chapter Eight: Plain Old Miserable**

_(In which our intrepid heroine meets a friend and eats a rat.)_

* * *

I'm sure your parents do this too.

My father has a story about me, when I was a little girl. When I was eighteen months old, I had somehow reached the child safety lock on the door and scampered outside to the barn. My mother was in the other room making dinner and my father had yet to come home from work. As he pulled in the driveway, he noticed that the barn door was wide open, which worried him. He went over to the barn to investigate and discovered that his precious little Priscilla, who had always been pretty headstrong and very vocal for the most part, had opened the door to the biggest, most rowdy gelding in the barn, Spitfire. I was underneath him, scratching his belly like a dog and singing him a song–I was also in serious danger of getting crushed by one of his powerful hooves. My father says that he scooped me up and tried to bring me inside, but Spitfire made such a fuss, kicking his barn walls and screaming, that my father had to put me down to placate him.

I ran straight back to the horse and Spitfire quieted down instantly.

Now, my father _loves _tell this story. He tells it everywhere–at dinner parties, barbecues, church, whatever. He thinks it's an example of my way with animals, which could be true; I've got a good touch with critters. (I personally think it's a sterling example of my stupidity and sheer luck, but to each his own, I guess.) See, the problem here is I'm not really sure I remember this happening. I remember feeling horsehair under my little hands, and I can even see myself, singing some nonsense song and stroking his belly, but I'm not sure how much of that is real memory and how much is my father's retelling.

That's how everything felt.

All of my memories felt faded somehow–like I had listened to people telling my life's story, and I wasn't sure how well I remembered things. My head was split in two with a headache, and everything magnified it. Light, noise, even the pounding of the blood inside my head, it all made it worse. So I settled for curling into a ball and pressing my hot, bleeding wrists to my temples, trying hard not to cry. Where the magical ropes had touched bare skin, it left a hard bruised ridge that split apart once I moved, and began dotting blood all over my clothes. Stripes of red were seeping into my sleeves and skirt hem, and the hot pulse of pain hurt desperately. The inside of my mouth was swollen and full of bite marks, where I had sunk my teeth into my lower lip and mouth to take my mind off the pain.

I hadn't been able to keep a track of the time, but once the wizard had finished with me, the sun was down and the room was full of shadows. He was ashen faced and looked exhausted, and I realized that going through someone's mind took a lot out of him. Gingerly, I felt around inside my head, trying to push memories back into the proper places. I hadn't realized I remembered so _much_—the pain of being left out of my best friend's birthday party. The joy of rescuing our mutt, Bowser, from the local shelter. Bitter terror when my youngest brother was born premature and my mother was hospitalized for three weeks.

It was all filling my head, and the rising waves of emotions were making me sick. But most of all, _scared_. I didn't know what he was going to do to me, so I curled up in a ball and tried hard to stop shaking. You know that expression "so scared, my knees were knocking together"? That's exactly what it was. I literally felt my knees hitting each other, my shakes were that violent.

"Stand up," he commanded in that rich, impossibly deep voice.

"Leave me alone," I sobbed.

"Stand _up_," he snarled, and still crying, I got to my feet. That silvery edge to his voice was back, but my whole body felt like one massive bruise and I couldn't listen properly.

I followed him at his command and we descended stairs. Worse, the stairs were in a tight downward spiral and they were maybe half an inch too low, which made stepping down awkward and uncertain. Once we hit bottom, the air was decidedly heavier and colder, and altogether damp. There was a torch on the wall casting flickering lights, and the wizard opened a metal door, which had rusty hinges that squealed in pain.

Without asking, I entered. The door slammed shut behind me, and I slid against the wall. Inside was blessedly cool and devoid of stimuli—my head felt as though it was going to blow up.

"Has he just started with you, then?"

I nearly screamed. I think I did, a little, but my head gave such a big flare of pain that it changed to a guttural groan.

"Guess he has. I think he forgot about me. You didn't bring any food with you, right?"

English. I'll be damned, but there was someone speaking English.

"I'm Justin, by the way. Justin Morrison. I'm from New Hampshire, what about you?"

I groaned in response.

"Do you speak English? You must, otherwise you wouldn't be here."

I lifted my gaze, and with a great effort I pushed my hair aside. It took some time for my eyes to get adjusted to the lack of light, but thanks to some of the torchlight outside I could make out some of the features on my English-speaking (English speaking, can you believe it!?) companion.

He was all hunched up, and seemed like he was skin and bones. What was obviously tattoos were etched onto his forearms and bare shoulders, and he had a strongly featured face. He might have been good looking a long time ago, before starvation reduced him to a whetstone and his eyes didn't have that maniac glint in them. Even in my brain-bruised state, I feared that look in his eyes.

"I'm okay," I croaked. I don't know why I said it, I think it was just a knee-jerk reaction. _I'm fine, yeah, it's okay, I'm fine_.

"Yeah right. I know I felt like dying just after he did my first session." He pawed at his hair and the action seemed feral, somehow. I half expected him to lift his leg and scratch an ear. "By the way, what's your name? I feel kinda weird just talking to nobody."

"Pris..." My mouth was dry, and I worked to get the name out. "Priscilla Henders. Fr'm Texas."

"Texas gal, huh? By the way, did you see my book?"

"Your...what?"

"My book. I came here with a book, I bought it for my girlfriend, but then I stepped into a manhole by accident and I wound up here. I spent a long time in the wilderness, trying to survive, and just hanging onto this book, y'know? It's a stupid little journal thing. My girlfriend, Susan, she's a writer, and I thought if I got her a book she would start writing poetry again. She likes to write poetry, only the last bozo she dated broke her heart and she stopped writing poetry."

His drawling, slightly nasally voice was drilling a hole in my head. Not to mention he had such a strong New England accent it was like listening to a different language. (Something which I had practice in.)

"Yeah, I...I think I saw it." I rubbed my head.

"You did? Do you have it?"

"No...no, I couldn't get it."

"You saw it and you couldn't get it? Why not?" he demanded fiercely, and I shrank away from that big voice and that raw rage. "You know how much that book means to me! You know it can get me home! You little bitch! You have it and you're hiding it, aren't you? Huh? Gimmie it!"

He pounced on me.

Adrenaline and fear shot through my body, from the crown of my aching skull to the tips of my toes. He was aggressive but felt pathetically light, as though he hadn't weighed much to begin with and now was reduced to a bag of feathers. I pushed him off, crying out in pain as his hand connected with my cheek, and kicked him in the chest.

"I'm sorry," he cried, flinching away from my foot. "I'm sorry, just _please_, please let me see the book!"

"I don't have the book!" I screamed in a cracked voice. It hurt my head, and what little vision I had disappeared behind a flash of white-hot pain.

"I'm sorry," he repeated. "I just...I need the book. The book can get me home, y'know? It'll save me. I want that book. If you have that book, and you're not telling me...I'm gonna be really mad. Okay? Okay."

He was crazy. Honest-to-God crazy.

* * *

My next session lasted occurred the next day, and lasted longer. He was slower now, more painful, more deliberate, as he rummaged through my memories. The once-perfectly smooth edges of my bruises were turning ragged and yellow, but as soon as he took the ropes off again, more bruises were layered on top of the first. They split open when I moved, and soon the clothes I wore were stiff with dried blood.

_Every_ memory. _Every_ feeling. All bared open and drilled through. More and more of them felt used and faded, as though I hadn't thought about them enough and they just crumbled to dust. To my horror, by my third session I couldn't remember things, like my mother's maiden name and my father's birthday. I couldn't remember what I had bought my little brother's for Christmas. I couldn't remember the address of the house I had been born in, back when we lived in Houston. I cried about these things when he deposited me back in my cell with Crazy Justin.

To my knowledge, he had finished with Crazy Justin and had left him to rot. At least, that's what Crazy Justin told me. He survived by eating the rats who came to habitually check if he was dead. Raw rat did not appeal in the slightest, but by the end of the week—and by extension, the end of my seventh session—I would have eaten raw maggots with a smile.

I couldn't take much more of this.

And then he found what he was looking for.

I started remembering the Lord of the Ring's movies. All of them. Being the older sister of four little boys, I had watched all of them several times and had pretty good recall about them. They weren't my favorite movies, but they were okay. And this wizard went bananas over them.

As soon as I started remembering Viggo Mortensen (who was the actor who played Aragorn, I think. Doesn't he have a kid?) and things started unraveling from there. I remembered the movies, watching them with my brother, being dragged repeatedly to the living room so I could watch the glory of all the action scenes. I remembered raving about the movies, pretending I was a complete expert when I discovered there was a guy I liked who adored the series. Everything. It all came flooding back.

But just when I started remembering how the movies went, he stopped.

He looked horrible. There were deep, dark circles under his eyes and he was panting. A thin sheen of sickly sweat was on his features, and I could tell that he was slipping fast. It took a lot of energy to keep me secured and also dig through my head. But I wasn't exactly on my A-game either, having eaten nothing but raw rat and licked moisture off the gritty walls.

We looked at each other.

"You have finally proved your usefulness," he said tiredly.

I couldn't speak or move, but there was another prickling shift, and suddenly I could. I fell on the floor and heard him step over to me.

"Come with me."

_No_.

"Stand up."

_No._

"Stand _up_." That musical edge was back in his voice.

The edges of my vision started to turn fuzzily black. Pressure pounded in my head.

My leg shot out and swept him across the ankles, catching both of us by surprise. I hooked a foot around his staff and jerked, sending both wizard and stick flying. He roared in anger and landed hard on the floor, and I stood up as quickly as I could. A huge, invisible hand squeeze my ribcage and I choked, feeling the breath vanish from my body.

My vision blacked out, and I still struggled, trying to breathe.

Was that my heart stopping, or an eagle screeching?

* * *

**.**

**.**

**Again, dark. (sigh) Very tired and ultimately not that pleased with this chapter. Pacing is a pain, and hopefully things will get resolved (more or less) by the next chapter. I was taught a very valuable lesson about em dashes by Handsome Jack, the kind gentleman who agreed to look over my stories for plot and characterization errors. ^^ Thank you, Jack! **

_|Fifteen Reviews Received at this time|_

_Special thanks to: _**Abbalina, Daeril Ullothwen, sparklesaremylife, Scylla's revenge, SkylarStorm94, quaff, Borys68, Xinn Lajgin, faye50free, Avespa Strife, FBI Surveillance, Yashida, Yuki Suou, madame zou, **_and _**Kerneigh**_. Oh my gosh, are you guys serious?! Fifteen reviews for one chapter!? You guys are amazing, and totally blow my mind! :D_


	9. Chapter 9: Ta Da! In The Nick Of Time!

**Chapter Nine: Ta-Da! In The Nick Of Time**

_(In which our intrepid heroine has to rescue herself and has a therapy session with an Elf.)_

* * *

_Bam!_

His staff hit the ground near my head, and I seized it hard with both hands. It was burning cold, and I felt the skin on my hands prickle sharply and pain shot through my arms. Gritting my teeth, I yanked harder and managed to pull the staff an inch or two out of his grip; as I did so, a surge of freezing power crackled down the staff and sent me flying across the room. I smashed against the wall and everything instantly went black. I wasn't blacked out for very long, because when my eyes fluttered open he was still in the opposite corner, breathing hard.

Saruman. This guy was Saruman.

I was in Lord of the Rings.

The white-hot cords wrapped themselves around my torso again, and I writhed against them, feeling the bruises break open along by body again. "_No!_" I screamed, and struggled to my feet. "No, no, _no_!"

Creative, I know. But honestly, that was the only thing I could think of. I couldn't be in a fictional story, I couldn't be held captive by one of the best known villains of all time; this couldn't be happening. The pain was incredible and seemed to be coming from everywhere; my head ached as though it had been split open, and my bare skin was lashed with bleeding bruises. My hands, my poor, poor hands had a stripe of gray frostbite along each palm and they felt as though I had stuck them both in a hot pan.

His hands were claws, the long white nails coming at my face, and effortlessly he was in my mind again. Memories got dredged up, and I started flashing back on every time I had watched the Lord of the Rings movies, every time I had heard them mentioned. The agony was unbearable. But this time, he either didn't have the energy or the time to gag me, because this time I was _screaming_.

I kicked out with both feet, making him jump back a step and the tremulous hold he had on my memories broke off. I felt the white ropes glow brighter, like a light bulb about to burn out, and then they blinked out of existence. I reached out with my injured hands and grabbed handfuls of his beard, yanking fiercely.

"Enough!" he bellowed, and flung me again, this time pinning me against the wall. I was thrashing and still howling, but I had passed the point of crying. My whole body was charged up with adrenaline, practically _vibrating_ with the amount of panic slamming through my veins. I was scared stiff, figuratively and literally, but I couldn't have stayed still if I tried.

He dropped me from at least ten feet, but luckily my shoulder and hip took the brunt of my weight. Thankfully, after a week of eating nothing but raw rat, I had lost some badly-needed fat. I spat my matted orange hair out of my eyes and looked up. Saruman looked as though he had blacked out, and I did the first thing I thought of—I grabbed the biggest, heaviest book off his shelves and brought it down smashing on his head.

I was not gentle.

I got in maybe two really good hits before he threw me across the room again. I scrabbled against his desk, looking for things to throw at him. I dug my nails into the faux-leather cover of the diary Saruman had taken from Crazy Justin. For reasons I still don't understand, I didn't throw it at him. I threw an inkwell instead, and his white robes got spattered with the dark blue ink.

There was a high, keening, wild screech of an eagle very close by. Have you heard an eagle call? It's loud. And that's from a normal size eagle. This one was at least ten times the size, and he was soaring right outside the window. I caught a glimpse of his huge yellow eye, and I remembered when Gandalf had escaped on the backs of eagles.

This must be it, then. Gandalf must be escaping.

Without hesitating, I sprinted towards the window, smashed through the glass with the book, and launched myself outside.

_Flump!_

I landed hard on the eagle's back, and I felt hot blood spring up from the cuts along my body. There was an especially bad one on my forehead, and the blood just _poured_ down my face and into my eyes. Head wounds bleed a lot, and if I had been thinking straight I would have been frantically trying to stop the blood flow. Instead, I was clinging to the back of an eagle, praying out loud to God that I wouldn't fall off. Dimly, through clotted blood and hair, I saw the unmoving form of Gandalf on another eagle. He looked much worse than I did, and he was completely unconscious.

Drifting in and out of consciousness was difficult. There was no way to tell how long we flew, since it was nighttime and raining lightly when we made our flight. My head pounded, and when I gingerly felt around the inside of my mouth I realized I had destroyed the inside of my cheeks, biting down on them hard in the middle of fighting for my life.

I thought about Crazy Justin and remembered the journal I still had gripped in my hand. My hand had left a bloody print on the soft brown cover.

* * *

I felt us land. There were voices, people standing over me, and I tried to open my eyes. One of them had crusted shut completely, and I panicked a little. The voices were alien, musical and soft, but there was a heavy note of urgency. I didn't know whether or not my hearing was wonky, or they were speaking a different language, but I definitely knew they were helping me off the eagle. It was somehow important to me to show that I was okay, that I could stand on my own two feet, and I did so, although with a great deal of support.

"Gandalf," I mumbled. "Other eagle. He's hurt."

A pause, and then I heard a gentle voice say, in Westron, "Can you understand me, little one?"

Oh, yeah, English didn't work here. I nodded, but the movement hurt my head. I tilted my chin back and peered out beneath my lashes, trying to lift a hand to scrub away the dried blood, but my sense of direction was loopy. I nearly poked myself in the eye.

In my befuddled state, I leaned heavily on someone's shoulder as they walked me slowly towards something. There was a rustle of wings and the eagles took off, leaving me alone in the drizzle with a wounded wizard and a bunch of other people. They kept talking to me, and before I knew it more people had lifted me easily, carrying me like I was a small child. I protested loudly, but it was easier than walking.

I drifted.

* * *

It was still dark when I came fully awake. I was very warm, dry, and clean, and for the most part, without pain. My head hurt, but there were bandages on my various cuts and bruises, and the low lamplight illuminated a bowlful of what looked like medicine. I lifted a hand to check the cut on my forehead and rub my eyes, and saw that my palms had been bandaged and covered with some kind of salve. It was kind of a luxury, to be warm and clean for once, but it felt distinctly wrong.

How had I gotten here?

On the backs of giant eagles, of course.

I threw a forearm over my eyes and suppressed a small bout of semi-hysterical laughter. This was not entirely successful, as a giggle or two of madness escaped me. Before too long, I was shaking from a combination of suppressed mirth and complete terror for my sanity. How was I supposed to accept that I was in a fictional story? In a _book_? This was the stuff of fairytales and fanfiction, not of real life. I thought of all the times I had nearly died, the massacre at the village, getting dragged across the country, leaving Crazy Justin to die in Saruman's tower—how was I supposed to survive in this word?

I couldn't. That was the kicker.

Getting out of bed was something I didn't want to deal with right now. I wanted to just stay quiet, safe, and warm all by myself. But I couldn't. My head was full of fuzzy memories, and no matter how hard I struggled, I couldn't recall certain memories or events. A headache was slowly building behind my left eye, and I felt hot, bitter tears slipping down my temples as I lay in bed. Wallowing in self-pity wasn't an option, so I threw the blankets back and sat up, putting my bare feet on the floors. Instantly I regretted it—the floors were stone, and _freezing_.

I wished there were socks or boots or something to put on my feet, but the room was so dim I couldn't see much. I knew I was wearing a soft robe of some kind, which was very loose and much too large for me. The sleeves extended far past my fingertips, and I shook them back so I could do something with them. Padding out of the room quietly, I shut the door behind me with a gentle thump. In the corridor, a narrow rug kept my feet off the cold stone, so I followed it for a while.

Several doorways branched off to each side, and despite my depression I began wondering how large this place was, exactly. If the movies were to be believed, I was supposed to be in the house with all the Elves. Oh, damn it, there was a name for that place...That memory, along with others much more precious, had faded into fuzziness after Saruman's repeated attacks. I gritted my teeth against this thought and hesitated at the end of the hallway. Two large doors were closed, but after testing the handles I discovered they weren't locked.

Feeling nosy and generally in the way, I opened the doors and found myself on a balcony.

It was a lovely night. I don't think I can properly describe how big and beautiful the sky was. You know when you go outside in the middle of the night, and everything is frosty cold but the sky is that beautiful midnight blue? Imagine that, only with _thousands_ of pure white stars. The moon was full, and looked like a carelessly tossed silver coin. The black tree line edged the sky in roughly, and I took a seat on the cold marble bench. Potted plants, mostly ferns, surrounded me, and I sniffled very quietly to myself.

I made a fierce promise to myself, swearing an oath on God and my lost family that I would not cry again while in this world. I had cried too many times, and it hurt too much with each tear that fell. I would have one good, long cry, right now, with only the stars watching. And that would be it.

The doors opened with a creak. I dragged my long sleeves across my nose and whirled around, feeling shy and nervous.

My jaw dropped.

Standing framed in the doorway was the single most beautiful thing I have ever seen. An Elf is not something that can be examined thoroughly, at least not all in one sitting, because when you first look at them all you can think is how _flawless _they are. They seem to glow, if only slightly, or maybe it was just the moonlight—either way, I saw glowing. The Elf in the doorway was tall, with a lithe, smooth build; I never saw a sturdy or bulky Elf, all of them were streamlined and sleek. He had thick brown hair that fell to his shoulders, and a circlet of silver was on the crown of his head. Dark wine-colored robes fell heavily to the floor, and his features were hidden with shadow.

Even more unsettling than the way they look is the way they _move_. Elves don't even seem to touch the ground—they walk like they're hovering an inch or so above such common things like the _floor_. The floor was for mortals. And immortality was something definitely etched into his features, which I could see as he drew closer. Gray eyes (I'd never seen gray eyes before) were framed with thick, dark lashes and a narrow mouth was drawn solemnly. Those eyes, God, those eyes had an _age_ in them, which was so weird because there wasn't a single line on his face.

"You should not be awake," the Elf said in a low voice. "Did you find something not to your liking in your room?"

Stupidly, I just stared at him, taking in the whole picture. An Elf, framed by moonlight; there aren't many more beautiful sights in the world. Especially if you've never seen an Elf before.

He seemed used to this, thank goodness, and inclined his head very slightly. "It appears as though neither of us can find sleep this night. May I join you?"

Somehow, somewhere, I possessed the strength of mind to scoot a little to the left, to make room on the bench. He sat down, a respectful distance away, and folded his hands into his sleeves. I turned my head at an awkward angle just so I could keep looking at him. His profile was straight and clean. I wished I had a pencil, and some kind of artistic talent, because a profile like that had to be copied down and treasured.

A very long silence passed, and then I heard myself say, "You are an Elf."

"I am indeed," he said, and although his narrow mouth smiled slightly, those dark gray eyes seemed old and tired. "I am Lord Elrond, master of this Halfway House. May I ask what you are called?"

"Pris..." I stopped myself. "Cilla. I am called Cilla."

_I am called Cilla_.

It felt strange to be called something other than my name. But this would work; it was easier for other people to say. I tried to quell the uneasy feeling of shedding yet another piece from my past.

"Cilla...may I inquire your story? How did you come to be on the back of an eagle, wounded and in great discomfort?" Lord Elrond asked delicately.

I didn't have the vocabulary to properly explain, so I took a moment to think about how I could say this. Slowly, I told him about falling into this world, with as many adjectives as I knew. I told him about living with Malenkaya, about how I learned a bit about medicine. (He seemed to like this—I think I saw approval in his eyes, anyway.) I told him about Rhó and Aytun and Blackbeard, my three saviors. I tried to tell him about the Orcs attacking, but I didn't know how to say it properly. He seemed to understand, anyway; the crease between his eyebrows grew deeper.

And then I moved on to Strider, who took me to Gandalf, who then took me to Saruman. There, I stopped.

It seemed an eternity before he spoke; he propped his chin on his hand and looked to the moon. I didn't fidget. I didn't cry. I just looked upwards and prayed her understood what I had said.

Finally, he stirred. "It will comfort you to know that your friend Gandalf, or Mithrandir as we call him, is expected to make a full recovery."

Something tight inside of me eased.

"And your other companion, Strider..." here he smiled, and it reached his eyes. "He is following a request given to him by Mithrandir. It is a request of great importance, something that must be done and I believe could be done by no other. That is the reason he did not come to your aid, or so I believe."

I looked away. "I was not..." I tried to find the words. "I did not expect Strider to come to my rescue. I only wished he had."

Lord Elrond turned to look at me and I looked away almost instantly. "Now, my child, I have something to ask you...what happened, at Saruman's tower?"

He already knew the answer. I could tell.

"He..." I swallowed. "He went through my mind. My head. Looking for something, for memories..."

How could I explain? How could I tell Lord Elrond that he was a fictional character? Would it be fair, would I ruin the "story" if I did so? Had I already ruined the story? I don't remember a sass-mouthed Texas cowgirl in the movies; I would have remembered that. How much had I already ruined, just by being here? I would have to make things right. Why were things going like this? How was it even _possible _to be pulled into a book this way? How much information at Saruman gotten of me and Crazy Justin? And why me, of all people? Why _me_?

He didn't give me a chance to ask those questions.

Lord Elrond took my hand, and I flinched away from the contact. He pressed his thumb in the center of my palm and murmured, "Please, Cilla, look at me."

Hesitantly, I did so.

God, those eyes were beautiful.

It started slowly at first, like the opening of a lily. Memories that had once been battered and bruised were slowly starting to open, fogginess was starting to clear. The details of my father's face, which had been gauzed over, now sharpened to great detail. I heard my mother's sweet voice through my head once more, I remembered the deep belly laugh of my youngest brother, John. I could remember names, addresses, phone numbers, events—I could see Matthew catching his first snapper and being so proud of it. I remember Mark at his first soccer game, toddling along on his fat tanned legs. I remembered the books I had read, the friends I had made, the times I had laughed and cried and the occasions I had lied. I remembered being in church and feeling my heart open like a bird taking flight, really _absorbing_ the Bible for the first time. I could see Christmas mornings and Easter Sundays, I remembered my heart being broken by a boy I loved and my father's big calloused hands in mine.

I remembered _home_.

When I stirred, I realized I had buried my face in Elrond's robe, and he was stroking my damp hair, speaking softly in a foreign, musical language.

And my cheeks were wet with tears.

* * *

**.**

**.**

**.**

**I'm getting rather sick of this mushy-gushy stuff. On to the plot, dang it! I want to see some action, not Elf-therapy!**

_|Ten reviews received|_

_Special thanks to: _**SparklesAreMyLife, Daeril Ullothwen, Petaldawn, Avespa Strife, Yuki Suou, February Song **_(I hope that's a good thing...:3)_**, Dark Owl, Yashida, ForthWritersofRohan **_(Thank you very, VERY much!) and one guest: _**Caelia Danan.**

_You guys are crazy amazing, and I have NO IDEA how this story got 97 reviews already. 97! Almost triple digits! How is that possible!? All thanks to you guys, of course. ^^_


End file.
